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Ancient  Classics  for  General  Readers 

EDITED  BY  THE 

REV.  W.  LUCAS  COLLINS,  M.A. 


HOKACE 


CONTENTS    OF    THE    SERIES. 


HOMER  :  THE  ILIAD By  the  Editor. 

HOMER:  THE  ODYSSEY,  .        .  By  THE  SAME. 

HERODOTUS,       ...       By  George  C.  Swayne,  M.A. 

C/ESAR, By  Anthony  Trollope. 

VIRGIL, By  the  Editor. 

HORACE, By  Theodore  Martin. 

jESCHYLUS,      By  the  Right  Rev.  the  Bishop  of  Colombo. 
XENOPHON,         .       .    By  Sir  Alex.  Grant,  Bart.,  LL.D. 

CICERO By  the  Editor. 

SOPHOCLES,  ...  By  Clifton  W.  Collins,  M.A. 
PLINY  By  A.  Church,  M.A.,  and  W.  J.  Brodribb,  M.A. 

EURIPIDES,  ...        By  William  Bodham  Donne. 

JUVENAL,      ....         By  Edward  Walford,  M.A. 

ARISTOPHANES By  the  Editor. 

HESIOD  AND  THEOGNIS,  By  the  Rev.  James  Da  vies,  M.A. 
PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE,      ...        By  the  Editor. 

TACITUS By  William  Bodham  Donne. 

LUCIAN By  the  Editor. 

PLATO By  Clifton  W.  Collins. 

THE  GREEK  ANTHOLOGY,  ...  By  Lord  Neaves. 
LIVY,       ........       By  the  Editor. 

OVID By  the  Rev.  A.  Church,  M.A. 

CATULLUS,  TIBULLUS,  &  PROPERTIUS,  ByJ.  Davies,  M.A. 
DEMOSTHENES,  .  .  By  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Brodribb,  M.A. 
ARISTOTLE,  ...    By  Sir  Alex.  Grant,  Bart.,  LL.D. 

TIIUCYDIDES By  the  Editor. 

LUCRETIUS By  W.  H.  Mallock,  M.A. 

PINDAR,         ...        By  the  Rev.  F.  D.  Morice,  M.A. 


HORACE 


BY 


THEODORE    MARTIN 


'<> 


OP  THE 


PHILADELPHIA  : 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT    COMPANY. 


^*7fl 


KG 


.v 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  PA.GR 

I.    BIRTH. — EDUCATION. — CAMPAIGN  WITH  BRUTUS  AND 

CASSIUS, 1 

II.    RETURNS    TO    ROME    AFTER    BATTLE    OF    PHILIPPI. — 

EARLY  POEMS, 17 

III.  INTRODUCTION     TO     MAECENAS.  — THE     JOURNEY     TO 

BRUNDUSIUM, 37 

IV.  PUBLICATION     OF     FIRST     BOOK     OF    SATIRES.  —  HIS 

FRIENDS. — RECEIVES    THE    SABINE     FARM     FROM 
MAECENAS, 54 

v.  life  in  rome —Horace's    bore. — extravagance 

OF  THE   ROMAN  DINNERS, 85 

vi.  Horace's  love-poetry, 107 

vii.  Horace's  poems  to  his  friends. — his  praises  of 

contentment, 135 

mi.  prevailing  belief  in  astrology.  —  Horace's 
views  of  a  hereafter.  —  RELATIONS  with 
Maecenas. — belief  in  the  permanence  of  his 
own  fame, 150 


i  CONTENTS. 

ix.  Horace's  relations  with  Augustus. — his   love 

of  independence, 168 

x.  delicacy  of  Horace's  health. — his  cheerful- 
ness.—love  OF  BOOKS. — HIS  PHILOSOPHY  PRAC- 
TICAL.—EPISTLE  TO  AUGUSTUS.— DEATH,     .  .189 


PREFACE. 


No  writer  of  antiquity  has  taken  a  stronger  hold  upon 
the  modern  mind  than  Horace.  The  causes  of  this 
are  manifold,  hut  three  may  he  especially  noted :  his  ] 
broad  human  sympathies,  his  vigorous  common-sense, 
and  his  consummate  mastery  of  expression.  The  mind 
must  he  either  singularly  barren  or  singularly  cold  to 
which  Horace  does  not  speak.  The  scholar,  the 
statesman,  the  soldier,  the  man  of  the  world,  the 
town-bred  man,  the  lover  of  the  country,  the  thought- 
ful and  the  careless,  he  who  reads  much,  and  he  who 
reads  little,  all  find  in  his  pages  more  or  less  to  amuse 
their  fancy,  to  touch  their  feelings,  to  quicken  their 
observation,  to  nerve  their  convictions,  to  put  into 
happy  phrase  the  deductions  of  their  experience 
His  poetical  sentiment  is  not  pitched  in  too  high  a 
key  for  the  unimaginative,  but  it  is  always  so  genuine 
that  the  most  imaginative  feel  its  charm.  His  wisdom 
is  deeper  than  it  seems,  so  simple,  practical,  and  direct 
as  it  is  in  its  application ;  and  his  moral  teaching  more 
spiritual  and  penetrating  than  is  apparent  on  a  super- 
ficial study.     He  does  not  fall  into  the  common  error 


viii  PREFACE. 

of  didactic  writers,  of  laying  upon  life  more  than  it 
will  bear ;  but  he  insists  that  it  shall  at  least  bear  the 
fruits  of  integrity,  truth,  honour,  justice,  self-denial, 
and  brotherly  charity.  Over  and  above  the  mere 
literary  charm  of  his  works,  too — and  herein,  perhaps, 
lies  no  small  part  of  the  secret  of  his  popularity — the 
warm  heart  and  thoroughly  urbane  nature  of  the  man 
are  felt  instinctively  by  his  readers,  and  draw  them  to 
him  as  to  a  friend. 

Hence  it  is  that  we  find  he  has  been  a  manual  with 
men  the  most  diverse  in  their  natures,  culture,  and 
pursuits.  Dante  ranks  him  next  after  Homer.  Mon- 
taigne, as  might  be  expected,  knows  him  by  heart. 
Fenelon  and  Bossuet  never  weary  of  quoting  him. 
La  Fontaine  polishes  his  own  exquisite  style  upon  his 
model ;  and  Voltaire  calls  him  "  the  best  of  preachers." 
Hooker  escapes  with  him  to  the  fields  to  seek  oblivion 
of  a  hard  life,  made  harder  by  a  shrewish  spouse. 
Lord  Chesterfield  tells  us,  "  When  I  talked  my  best  I 
quoted  Horace."  To  Boileau  and  to  Wordsworth  he 
is  equally  dear.  Condorcet  dies  in  his  dungeon  with 
Horace  open  by  his  side ;  and  in  Gibbon's  militia 
days,  "  on  every  march,"  he  says,  "  in  every  journey, 
Horace  was  always  in  my  pocket,  and  often  in  my 
hand.1'  And  as  it  has  been,  so  it  is.  In  many  a 
pocket,  where  this  might  be  least  expected,  lies  a  well- 
thumbed  Horace;  and  in  many  a  devout  Christian 
In  art  the  maxims  of  the  gentle,  genial  pagan  find  a 
place  near  the  higher  teachings  of  a  greater  master. 

Where  so  much  of  a  writer's  charm  lies,  as  with 
Horace,   in  exquisite  aptness  of  language,  and  in  a 


PRE  FA  CE.  ix 

style  perfect  for  fulness  of  suggestion  combined  with 
brevity  and  grace,  the  task  of  indicating  his  charac- 
teristics in  translation  demands  the  most  liberal  allow- 
ance from  the  reader.  In  this  volume  the  writer  has 
gladly  availed  himself,  where  he  might,  of  the  privi- 
lege liberally  accorded  to  him  to  use  the  admirable 
translations  of  the  late  Mr  Conington,  which  are  dis- 
tinguished in  all  cases  by  the  addition  of  his  initial. 
The  other  translations  are  the  writer's  own.  For 
these  it  would  be  superfluous  to  claim  indulgence. 
This  is  sure  to  be  granted  by  those  who  know  their 
Horace  well.  With  those  who  do  not,  these  transla- 
tions will  not  be  wholly  useless,  if  they  serve  to  pique 
them  into  cultivating  an  acquaintance  with  the  ori- 
ginal sufficiently  close  to  justify  them  in  turning  critica 
of  their  defects. 


QUINTUS   HOItATITJS   FLACCUS. 

SORN,  A.U.C.  689,  B.C.  65.      DIED,  A.U.O.  746,  B.C.  8. 


s^ 


JIVBR5.IT7, 


CHAPTER   I. 

BIRTH. — EDUCATION. — CAMPAIGN  WITH   BRUTUS   AND   CASS1U8. 

Like  the  two  greatest  lyrists  of  modern  times,   Burns 
and  Beranger,  Horace  sprang  from  the  ranks   of  the 
people.     His  father  had  been  a  slave,  and  he  was  him- 
self cradled  among  "  the  huts  where  poor  men  lie." 
Like  these  great  lyrists,  too,   Horace  was  proud  of  his 
origin.     After  he  had  become  the  intimate  associate  of 
the  first  men  in  Rome — nay,  the  bosom  friend  of  the 
generals  and  statesmen  who  ruled  the  world — he  was 
at  pains  on  more  occasions  than  one  to  call  attention 
to  the  fact  of  his  humble  birth,  and  to  let  it  be  known 
that,  had  he  to  begin  life  anew,  he  was  so  far  from  de- 
siring a  better  ancestry  that  he  would,  like  Andrew 
Marvell,  have  made  "  his  destiny  his  choice."     Nor  is 
this  done  with  the  pretentious  affectation  of  the  par- 
venu, eager  to  bring  under  notice  the  contrast  between 
what  he  is  and  what  he  has  been,  and  to  insinuate  his 
personal  deserts,  while  pretending  to  disclaim  them. 
Horace  has   no  such  false  humility.     He  was  proud, 
and  he  makes  no  secret  that  he  was  so,  of  the  name  he 
Viad  made, — proud  of  it  for  himself  and  for  the  class 
a.  c.   vol.  vi.  A 


2  uURACE. 

from  whion  he  had  sprung.  Eut  it  was  his  practice, 
as  well  as  his  settled  creed,  to  rate  at  little  the  acci- 
dents of  "birth  and  fortune.  A  stronger  and  higher 
feeling,  however,  more  probably  dictated  the  avowal,— 
gratitude  to  that  slave-born  father  whose  character 
and  careful  training  had  stamped  an  abiding  influence 
upon  the  life  and  genius  of  his  son.  Neither  might  he 
have  been  unwilling  in  this  way  quietly  to  protest 
against  the  worship  of  rank  and  wealth  which  he  saw 
everywhere  around  him,  and  which  was  demoralising 
society  in  Rome.  The  favourite  of  the  Emperor,  the 
companion  of  Maecenas,  did  not  himself  forget,  neither 
would  he  let  others  forget,  that  he  was  a  freedman's 
son ;  and  in  his  own  way  was  glad  to  declare,  as  Beranger 
did  of  himself  at  the  height  of  his  fame, 

"  Je  suis  vilain,  et  tres  vilain." 

The  Eoman  poets  of  the  pre- Augustan  and  Augustan 
periods,  unlike  Horace,  were  all  well  born.  Catullus 
and  Calvus,  his  great  predecessors  in  lyric  poetry,  were 
men  of  old  and  noble  family  Virgil,  born  five  years 
>re  Horace,  was  the  son  of  a  Eoman  citizen  of  good 
property.  Tibullus,  Propertius,  and  Ovid,  who  Mere 
respectively  six,  fourteen,  and  twenty  years  his  juniors, 
were  all  of  equesl rian  rank.  Horace's  father  was  a  freed- 
man  of  the  town  of  Venusia,  the  modern  Yen osa.  It  is 
supposed  that  he  had  been  apublicus  servus,  or  slave  of 
the  community,  and  took  his  distinctive  name  from  the 
Horatian  tribe,  to  which  the  community  belonged.  He 
had  saved  a  moderate  competency  in  the  vocation  of 
coactor,  a  nam.-  applied  both  to  the  collectors  of  public 


HIS   FATHER.  3 

revenue  and  of  money  at  sales  by  public  auction.  To 
which  of  these  classes  he  belonged  is  uncertain  —  most 
probably  to  the  latter ;  and  in  those  days  of  frequent  con- 
fiscations, when  property  was  constantly  changing  hands, 
the  profits  of  his  calling,  at  best  a  poor  one,  may  have 
been  unusually  large.  With  the  fruits  of  his  industry 
he  had  purchased  a  small  farm  near  Yenusia,  upon 
the  banks  of  the  Aufidus,  the  modern  Ofanto,  on 
the  confines  of  Lucania  and  Apulia.  Here,  on  the 
8th  of  December,  e.c.  65,  the  poet  was  born ;  and 
this  picturesque  region  of  mountain,  forest,  and  river, 
"  meet  nurse  of  a  poetic  child,"  impressed  itself  in- 
delibly on  his  memory,  and  imbued  him  with  the  love 
of  nature,  especially  in  her  rugged  aspect,  which  re- 
mained with  him  through  life.  He  appears  to  have 
left  the  locality  in  early  life,  and  never  to  have  re- 
visited it ;  but  when  he  has  occasion  to  describe  its 
features  (Odes,  III.  4),  he  does  this  with  a  sharpness 
and  truth  of  touch,  which  show  how  closely  he  had 
even  then  begun  to  observe.  Acherontia,  perched  nest- 
like among  the  rocks,  the  Bantine  thickets,  the  fat 
meadows  of  low-lying  Forenturn,  which  his  boyish 
eye  had  noted,  att€?t  to  tin's  hour  the  vivid  ac- 
curacy of  his  description.  The  passage  in  question 
records  an  interesting  incident  in  the  poet's  childhood. 
Escaping  from  his  nurse,  he  has  rambled  away  from  the 
little  cottage  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Yultur,  whither 
he  had  probably  been  taken  from  the  sultry  Yenusia  to 
pass  his  villeggiatura  during  the  heat  of  summer,  and 
is  found  asleep,  covered  with  fresh  myrtle  and  laurel 
leaves,  in  which  the  wood-pigeons  have  swathed  him. 


4  HORACE. 

"  When  from  my  nurse  erewhile,  on  Vultures  steep, 
I  stray'd  beyond  the  bound 
Of  our  small  homestead's  ground, 
Was  I,  fatigued  with  play,  beneath  a  heap 
Of  fresh  leaves  sleeping  found, — 

"  Strewn  by  the  storied  doves  ;  and  wonder  fell 
On  all,  their  nest  who  keep 
On  Acherontia's  steep, 
Or  in  Forentum's  low  rich  pastures  dwell, 
Or  Bantine  woodlands  deep, 

"  That  safe  from  bears  and  adders  in  such  place 
I  lay,  and  slumbering  smiled, 
O'erstrewn  with  myrtle  wild, 
And  laurel,  by  the  god's  peculiar  grace 
No  craven-hearted  child." 

The  incident  thus  recorded  is  not  necessarily  dis- 
credited by  the  circumstance  of  its  being  closely  akin 
to  what  is  told  by  iElian  of  Pindar,  that  a  swarm  of. 
bees  settled  upon  his  lips,  and  fed  him  with  honey, 
when  he  was  left  exposed  upon  the  highway.  It  pro- 
bably had  some  foundation  in  fact,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  the  implied  augury  of  the  special  favour  of 
the  gods  which  is  said  to  have  been  drawn  from  it  at 
the  time.  In  any  case,  the  picture  of  the  strayed  cliild, 
sleeping  unconscious  of  its  danger,  with  its  hands  full 
of  wild-flowers,  is  pleasant  to  contemplate. 

In  his  father's  house,  and  in  those  of  the  Apulian 
peasantry  around  him,  Horace  became  familiar  with 
the  simple  virtues  of  the  poor,  their  industry  and  in- 
dependence, their  integrity,  chastity,  and  self-denial, 
which  he   loved    to  contrast  in  after  years   with    the 


AN  ONLY  CHILD.  5 

luxury  and  vice  of  imperial  Rome.  His  mother  he 
would  seem  to  have  lost  early.  No  mention  of  hei 
occurs,  directly  or  indirectly,  throughout  his  poems ; 
and  remarkable  as  Horace  is  for  the  warmth  of  his 
affections,  this  could  scarcely  have  happened  had  she 
not  died  when  he  was  very  young.  He  appears  also 
to  have  been  an  only  child.  This  doubtless  drew  him 
closer  to  his  father,  and  the  want  of  the  early  influ- 
ences of  mother  or  sister  may  serve  to  explain  why 
one  misses  in  his  poetry  something  of  that  gracious  ten- 
derness towards  womanhood,  which,  looking  to  the  sweet 
and  loving  disposition  of  the  man,  one  might  otherwise 
have  expected  to  find  in  it.  That  he  was  no  common 
boy  we  may  be  very  sure,  even  if  this  were  not  mani- 
fest from  the  fact  that  his  father  resolved  to  give  him 
a  higher  education  than  was  to  be  obtained  under  a 
provincial  schoolmaster.  With  this  view,  although 
little  able  to  afford  the  expense,  he  took  his  son,  when 
about  twelve  years  old,  to  Rome,  and  gave  him  the 
best  education  the  capital  could  supply.  ~No  money 
was  spared  to  enable  him  to  keep  his  position  among 
his  fellow-scholars  of  the  higher  ranks.  He  was  Avaited 
on  by  several  slaves,  as  though  he  were  the  heir  to  a 
considerable  fortune.  At  the  same  time,  however,  he 
was  not  allowed  either  to  feel  any  shame  for  his  own 
order,  or  to  aspire  to  a  position  which  his  patrimony 
was  unable  to  maintain.  His  father  taught  him  to 
look  forward  to  some  situation  akin  to  that  in  which 
his  own  modest  competency  had  been  acquired ;  and 
to  feel  that,  in  any  sphere,  culture,  self-respect,  and 
prudent  self  -  control   must  command  influence,   and 


6  HORACE. 

afford  the  best  guarantee  for  happiness.  In  reading 
this  part  of  Horace's  story,  as  he  tells  it  himself,  one 
is  reminded  of  Burns's  early  lines  about  his  father  and 

himself : — ■ 

"  My  father  was  a  farmer  upon  the  Carrick  border, 
And  carefully  lie  bred  me  up  in  decency  and  order. 
He  bade  me  act  a  manly  part,  though  I  had  ne'er  a  farthing, 
For  without  an  honest  manly  heart  no  man  was  worth 
regarding." 

The  parallel  might  be  still  further  pursued.  "  My 
father,"  says  Gilbert  Burns,  "  was  for  some  time  almost 
the  only  companion  we  had.  He  conversed  familiarly 
on  all  subjects  with  us  as  if  we  had  beer,  men,  and 
was  at  great  pains,  while  we  accompanied  nim  in  the 
labours  of  the  farm,  to  lead  the  conversation  to  such 
subjects  as  might  tend  to  increase  our  knowledge,  or 
confirm  us  in  virtuous  habits."  How  closely  this  re- 
sembles the  method  adopted  with  Horace  by  his  father 
will  be  seen  hereafter.* 

Horace's  literary  master  at  Rome  was  Orbilius 
Pupillus,  a  grammarian,  who  had  carried  into  his 
school  his  martinet  habits  as  an  old  soldier;  and  who, 
thanks  to  Horace,  has  become  a  name  (plagos-us  Orbi 
liu.%  Orbilius  of  the  birch)  eagerly  applied  by  many 
a  suffering  urchin  to  modern  pedagogues  who  have  re- 
sorted to  the  same  material  means  of  inculcating  the 

*  Compare  it,  too,  with  what  Horace  reports  of 

"  Ofellus  the  hind, 
Tlmugli  no  scholar,  a  sage  of  exceptional  kind," 

in  the  Second  Satire  of  the  Second  Book,  froro  lino  114  to  the 
end. 


AT  SCHOOL  AT  ROME.  7 

beauties  of  the  classics.  By  this  Bushy  of  the  period 
Horace  was  grounded  in  Greek,  and  made  familiar,  too 
familiar  for  his  liking,  with  Ennius,  Msevius,  Pacuvius, 
Attius,  Livius  Andronicus,  and  other  early  Latin 
writers,  whose  unpruned  vigour  was  distasteful  to  one 
who  had  already  begun  to  appreciate  the  purer  and 
not  less  vigorous  style  of  Homer  and  other  Greek 
authors.  Horace's  father  took  care  that  he  should 
acquire  all  the  accomplishments  of  a  Roman  gentleman, 
in  which  music  and  rhetoric  were,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  included.  But,  what  was  of  still  more  im- 
portance during  this  critical  period  of  the  future 
poet's  first  introduction  to  the  seductions  of  the 
capital,  he  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  his  father's  per- 
sonal superintendence  and  of  a  careful  moral  training. 
His  father  went  with  him  to  all  his  classes,  and,  being 
himself  a  man  of  shrewd  observation  and  natural 
humour,  he  gave  the  boy's  studies  a  practical  bearing 
by  directing  his  attention  to  the  follies  and  vices  of 
the  luxurious  and  dissolute  society  around  him,  show- 
ing him  how  incompatible  they  were  with  the  dictates 
of  reason  and  common-sense,  and  how  disastrous  in 
their. consequences  to  the  good  name  and  happiness  of 
those  who  yielded  to  their  seductions.  The  method  he 
pursued  is  thus  described  by  Horace  (Satires,  I.  4)  : — 

"  Should  then  my  humorous  vein  run  wild,  some  latitude 

allow. 
I  learned  the  habit  from  the  best  of  fathers,  who  employed 
Rome  living  type  to  stamp  the  vice  he  wished  me  to  avoid 
Thus  temperate  and  frugal  when  exhorting  me  to  be, 
A.nd  with  the  competence  content  which  he  had  stored  for 

me, 


8  HORA  CE. 

1  Look,  boy  ! '  he'd  say,  '  at  Albius'  son — observe  his  sorry 

plight ! 
And  Barrus,  that  poor  beggar  there  !     Say,  are  not  these  a 

sight, 
To  warn  a  man  from  squandering  his  patrimonial  means  V 
When  counselling  me  to  keep  from  vile  amours  with  com- 
mon queans  ; 
*  Sectanus,  ape  him  not ! '   he'd  say  ;   or,  urging  to  for- 
swear 
Intrigue  with  matrons,  when  I  might  taste  lawful  joys 

elsewhere  ; 
'  Trebonius'  fame  is  blurred  since  he  was  in  the  manner 

caught. 
The  reasons  why  this  should  be  shunned,  and  why  that 

should  be  sought, 
The  sages  will  explain  ;  enough  for  me,  if  I  uphold 
The  faith  and  morals  handed  down  from  our  good  sires  of 

old, 
And,  while  you  need  a  guardian,  keep  your  life  pure  and 

your  name. 
When  years  have  hardened,  as  they  will,  your  judgment 

and  your  frame, 
You'll  swim  without  a  float ! '    And  so,  with  talk  like  this, 

he  won 
And  moulded  me,  while  yet  a  boy.     Was  something  to  be 

done, 
Hard  it  might  be — '  For  this,'  he'd  say,  '  good  warrant  you 

can  quote ' — 
And  then  as  model  pointed  to  some  public  man  of  note. 
Or  was  there  something  to  be  shunned,  then  he  would 

urge,  '  Can  you 
One  moment  doubt  that  acts  like  these  are  base  and  futile 

too, 
Which  have  to  him  and  him  such  dire  disgrace  and  trouble 

bred?' 
And  as  a  neighbour's  death  appals  the  sick,  and,  by  th« 

dread 


UTS   FATHER.  9 

Of  dying,  foi  f  upon  their  lusts  restraint, 

So  tender  minds  i  I  from  vices  by  the  taint 

They  see  them  bring  ^ames  ;  'tis  thus  that  I 

from  those 
Am  all  exempt,  which  bring  with  them  a  train  of  shamea 

and  woes." 

Nor  did  Horace  only  inherit  from  iiis  father,  as  he 
here  says,  the  kindly  humour  and  practical  good  sense 
which,  distinguish  his  satirical  and  didactic  writings, 
and  that  manly  independence  which,  he  preserved 
through,  the  temptations  of  a  difficult  career.  Many 
of  "  the  rugged  maxims  hewn  from  life  "  with  which 
his  works  abound  are  manifestly  but  echoes  of  what 
the  poet  had  heard  from  his  father's  lips.  Like  his 
own  Ofellus,  and  the  elders  of  the  race — not,  let  us  hope, 
altogether  bygone — of  peasant-farmers  in  Scotland,  des- 
cribed by  Wordsworth  as  "  Religious  men,  who  give  to 
God  and  men  their  dues," — the  Apulian  freedman  had  a 
fund  of  homely  wisdom  at  command,  not  gathered  from 
books,  but  instinct  with  the  freshness  and  force  of 
direct  observation  and  personal  conviction.  The  fol- 
lowing exquisite  tribute  by  Horace  to  his  worth  is 
conclusive  evidence  how  often  and  how  deeply  he  had 
occasion  to  be  grateful,  not  only  for  the  affectionate 
care  of  this  admirable  father,  but  also  for  the  bias  and 
strength  which  that  father's  character  had  given  to  his 
own.  It  has  a  further  interest,  as  occurring  in  a  poem 
addressed  to  Maecenas,  a  man  of  ancient  family  and 
vast  wealth,  in  the  early  days  of  that  acquaintance 
with  the  poet  which  was  afterwards  to  ripen  into  a 
lifelong  friendship. 


10  HORACE. 

"Yet  if  some  trivial  faults,  and  these  but  few, 
My  nature,  else  not  much  amiss,  imbue 
(Just  as  you  wish  away,  yet  scarcely  blame, 
A  mole  or  two  upon  a  comely  frame), 
If  no  man  may  arraign  me  of  tbe  vice 
Of  lewdness,  meanness,  nor  of  avarice  ; 
If  pure  and  innocent  I  live,  and  dear 
To  those  I  love  (self-praise  is  venial  here), 
All  this  I  owe  my  father,  who,  though  poor, 
Lord  of  some  few  lean  acres,  and  no  more, 
Was  loath  to  send  me  to  the  village  school, 
Whereto  the  sons  of  men  of  mark  and  rule, — 
Centurions,  and  the  like, — were  wont  to  swarm, 
With  slate  and  satchel  on  sinister  arm, 
And  the  poor  dole  of  scanty  pence  to  pay 
The  starveling  teacher  on  the  quarter-day  ; 
But  boldly  took  me,  when  a  boy,  to  Rome, 
There  to  be  taught  all  arts  that  grace  the  home 
Of  knight  and  senator.     To  see  my  dress, 
And  slaves  attending,  you'd  have  thought,  no  less 
Than  patrimonial  fortunes  old  and  great 
Had  furnished  forth  the  charges  of  my  state. 
When  with  my  tutors,  he  would  still  be  by, 
Nor  ever  let  me  wander  from  his  eye  ; 
And,  in  a  word,  he  kept  me  chaste  (and  this 
Is  virtue's  crown)  from  all  that  was  amiss, 
Nor  such  in  act  alone,  but  in  repute, 
Till  even  scandal's  tattling  voice  was  mute. 
No  dread  had  he  that  men  might  taunt  or  jeer, 
Should  I,  some  future  day,  as  auctioneer, 
Or,  like  himself,  as  tax-collector,  seek 
With  petty  fees  my  humble  means  to  eke. 
Nor  should  I  then  have  murmured.     Now  I  know, 
More  earnest  thanks,  and  loftier  praise  I  owe. 
Reason  must  fail  me,  ere  I  cease  to  own 
With  pride,  that  I  have  such  a  father  known  ; 


HIS   FATHER.  II 

Nor  shall  I  stoop  my  "birth  to  vindicate,—. 

By  charging,  like  the  herd,  the  wrong  on  Fate, 

That  I  was  not  of  noble  lineage  sprung  : 

Far  other  creed  inspires  my  heart  and  tongue. 

For  now  should  Nature  bid  all  living  men 

Eetrace  their  years,  and  live  them  o'er  again, 

Each  culling,  as  his  inclination  bent, 

His  parents  for  himself,  with  mine  content, 

I  would  not  choose  whom  men  endow  as  great 

With  the  insignia  and  seats  of  state  ; 

And,  though  I  seemed  insane  to  vulgar  eyes, 

Thou  wouldst  perchance  esteem  me  truly  wise, 

In  thus  refusing  to  assume  the  care 

Of  irksome  state  I  was  unused  to  bear." 


The  education,  of  which  Horace's  father  had  laid 
:he  foundation  at  Rome,  would  not  have  been  com- 
plete without  a  course  of  study  at  Athens,  then  the 
capital  of  literature  and  philosophy,  as  Rome  was  of 
political  power.  Thither  Horace  went  somewhere 
between  the  age  of  17  and  20..  "At  Rome,"  he  says 
(Epistles,  II.  ii.  23), 

"  I  had  my  schooling,  and  was  taught 
Achilles'  wrath,  and  all  the  woes  it  brought  ; 
At  classic  Athens,  where  I  went  ere  long, 
I  learned  to  draw  the  line  'twixt  right  and  wrong, 
And  search  for  truth,  if  so  she  might  be  seen, 
In  Academic  groves  of  blissful  green."     (C.) 

At  Athens  he  found  many  young  men  of  the  lead- 
ing Roman  families — Bibulus,  Messalla,  Corvinus,  the 
younger  Cicero,  and  others — engaged  in  the  same  pur- 
suits with  himself,  and  he  contracted  among  them 
many  enduring  friendships.  In  the  political  lull 
winch  ensued  between    the  battle  of  Pharsalia  (c.c. 


12  HOR  4  CE. 

48)  and  the  death  of  Julius  Caesar  (b.c.  44),  he  was 
enabled  to  devote  himself  without  interruption  to 
the  studies  which  had  drawn  him  to  that  home  of 
literature  and  the  arts.  But  these  were  destined  before 
long  to  be  rudely  broken.  The  tidings  of  that  start- 
ling event  had  been  hailed  with  delight  by  the  youth- 
ful spirits,  some  of  whom  saw  in  the  downfall  of  the 
great  Dictator  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  of  liberty,  while 
others  hoped  from  it  the  return  to  power  of  the 
aristocratic  party  to  which  they  belonged.  In  this 
mood  Brutus  found  them  when  he  arrived  in  Athens 
along  with  Cassius,  on  their  way  to  take  command  of 
the  Eastern  provinces  which  had  been  assigned  to 
them  by  the  Senate.  Cassius  hurried  on  to  his  post 
in  Syria,  but  Brutus  lingered  behind,  ostensibly  ab- 
sorbed in  the  philosophical  studies  of  the  schools, 
but  at  the  same  time  recruiting  a  staff  of  officers  for 
his  army  from  among  the  young  Romans  of  wealth 
and  family  whom  it  was  important  he  should  attach 
to  his  party,  and  who  were  all  eagerness  to  make  his 
cause  their  own.  Horace,  infected  by  the  general 
enthusiasm,  joined  his  standard;  and,  though  then  only 
twenty-two,  without  experience,  and  with  no  special 
aptitude,  physical  or  mental,  for  a  military  life,  he  was 
intrusted  by  Brutus  with  the  command  of  a  legion. 
There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  owed  a  command 
of  such  importance  to  any  dearth  of  men  of  good 
family  qualified  to  act  as  officers.  It  is,  therefore, 
only  reasonable  to  conclude,  that  even  at  this  early 
period  he  was  recognised  in  the  brilliant  society 
around  him  as  a  man  of  mark  ;  and  that  Brutus,  before 


A   MILITARY  TRIBUNE.  13 

selecting  him,  had  thoroughly  satisfied  himself  that 
he  possessed  qualities  which  justified  so  great  a  devia- 
tion from  ordinary  rales,  as  the  commission  of  so  re- 
sponsible a  charge  to  a  freedman's  son.  That  Horace 
crave  his  commander  satisfaction  we  know  from  him- 
self.  Tne  line  (Epistles,  I.  xx.  23),  "  Me  primis  urbis 
belli  placuisse  domique, 


41  At  home,  as  in  the  field,  I  made  my  way, 
And  kept  it,  with  the  first  men  of  the  da)7," — 

can  he  read  in  no  other  sense.  But  while  Horace  had, 
beyond  all  doubt,  made  himself  a  strong  party  of 
friends  who  could  appreciate  his  genius  and  attractive 
qualities,  his  appointment  as  military  tribune  excited 
jealousy  among  some  of  his  brother  officers,  who  con- 
sidered that  the  command  of  a  Roman  legion  should 
have  been  reserved  fur  men  of  nobler  blood  —  a 
jealousy  at  which  he  said,  with  his  usual  modesty, 
many  years  afterwards  (Satires,  I.  vi.  45),  lie  had  no 
reason  either  to  be  surprised  or  to  complain. 

In  B.C.  43,  Brutus,  with  his  army,  passed  from 
Macedonia  to  join  Cassius  in  Asia  Minor,  and  Horace 
took  his  part  in  their  subsequent  active  and  brilliant 
campaign  there.  Of  this  we  get  some  slight  inci- 
dental glimpses  in  his  works.  Thus,  for  example 
(Odes,  II.  7),  we  find  him  reminding  his  comrade, 
Pompeius  Varus,  how 

"  Full  oft  they  sped  the  lingering  day 
Quaffing  bright  wine,  as  in  our  tents  we  lay, 
With  Syrian  spikenard  on  our  glistening  hair." 


14  HORACE. 

The  Syrian  spikenard,  Malobathrum  Syricum,  fixes 
the  locality.  Again,  in  the  epistle  to  his  friend  Bulla- 
tius  (Epistles,  I.  11),  who  is  making  a  tour  in  Asia, 
Horace  speaks  of  several  places  as  if  from  vivid  recol- 
lection. In  his  usual  dramatic  manner,  he  makes 
Bullatius  answer  his  inquiries  as  to  how  he  likes  the 
places  he  has  seen  : — 

"  You  know  what  Le7>edos  is  like;  so  hare, 
With  Gabii  or  Fidense  'twould  compare  ; 
Yet  there,  methinks,  I  would  accept  my  lot, 
My  friends  forgetting,  by  my  friends  forgot, 
Stand  on  the  cliff  at  distance,  and  survey 
The  stormy  sea-god's  wild  Titanic  play."     (C.) 

Horace  himself  had  manifestly  watched  the  angry 
surges  from  the  cliffs  of  Lebedos.  But  a  more  interest- 
ing record  of  the  Asiatic  campaign,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
probably  the  earliest  specimen  of  Horace's  writing 
which  we  have,  occurs  in  the  Seventh  Satire  of  the 
First  Book.  Persius,  a  rich  trader  of  Clazomene,  has 
a  lawsuit  with  Bupilius,  one  of  Brutus' s  officers,  who 
went  by  the  nickname  of  "  King."  Brutus,  in  his 
character  of  quaestor,  has  to  decide  the  dispute,  which 
in  the  hands  of  the  principals  degenerates,  as  disjmtes 
so  conducted  generally  do,  into  a  personal  squabble. 
Persius  leads  off'  with  some  oriental  flattery  of  the 
general  and  his  suite.  Brutus  is  "  Asia's  sun,"  and 
they  the  "propitious  stars,"  all  but  Rupilius,  who 
was 

"That  pest, 
The  Dog,  whom  1  asbandmen  detest." 


HIS  FIRST  SATIRE.  15 

Rupilius,  an  old  hand  at  slang,  replies  with  a  volley 

of  rough  sarcasms,   "  such  as  among  the  vineyards  fly," 

and 

"  Would  make  the  passer-by 
Shout  filthy  names,  but  shouting  fly" — ■ 

a  description  of  vintage  slang  which  is  as  true  to-day 
as  it  was  then.  The  conclusion  is  curious,  as  a  pun- 
ning allusion  to  the  hereditary  fame  of  Brutus  as  a 
puller -down  of  kings,  which  it  must  have  required 
some  courage  to  publish,  when  Augustus  was  omnipo- 
tent in  Rome. 

"  But  Grecian  Persius,  after  he 
Had  been  besprinkled  plenteously 
With  gall  Italic,  cries,  '  By  all 
The  gods  above,  on  thee  I  call, 
Oh  Brutus,  thou  of  old  renown, 
For  putting  kings  completely  down, 
To  save  us  !     Wherefore  do  vou  not 

* 

Despatch  this  King  here  on  the  spot  ? 
One  of  the  tasks  is  this,  believe, 
Which  you  are  destined  to  achieve  ! '" 

This  is  just  such  a  squib  as  a  young  fellow  might 
be  expected  to  dash  off  for  the  amusement  of  his 
brother  officers,  while  the  incident  which  led  to  it 
was  yet  fresh  in  their  minds.  Slight  as  it  is,  one 
feels  sure  its  preservation  by  so  severe  a  critic  of  his 
own  writings  as  Horace  was  due  to  some  charm  of 
association,  or  possibly  to  the  fact  that  in  it  he  had 
made  his  first  essay  in  satire. 

The  defeat  of  Brutus  at  Philippi  (b.c.  42)  brought 
Horace's  military  career  to  a  close.      Even  before  this 


16  HORACE. 

decisive  event,  his  dream  of  the  re-establishment  of 
liberty  and  the  old  Roman  constitution  had  probably 
begun  to  fade  away,  under  his  actual  experience  of  the 
true  aims  and  motives  of  the  mass  of  those  whom 
Brutus  and  Cassius  had  hitherto  been  leading  to  vic- 
tory, and  satiating  with  plunder.  Young  aristocrats, 
who  sneered  at  the  freedman's  son,  were  not  likely  to 
found  any  system  of  liberty  worthy  of  the  name,  or  to 
use  success  for  nobler  purposes  than  those  of  selfish 
ambition.  Fighting  was  not  Horace's  vocation,  and 
with  the  death  of  Brutus  and  those  nobler  spirits,  who 
fell  at  Philippi  rather  than  survive  their  hopes  of  free- 
dom, his  motive  for  fighting  was  at  an  end.  To  pro- 
long a  contest  which  its  leaders  had  surrendered  in 
despair  was  hopeless.  He  did  not,  therefore,  like 
Pompeius  Varus  and  others  of  his  friends,  join  the 
party  which,  for  a  time,  protracted  the  struggle  under 
the  younger  Pompey.  But,  like  his  great  leader,  he 
had  fought  for  a  principle  ;  nor  could  he  have  regarded 
otherwise  than  with  horror  the  men  who  had  over- 
thrown Brutus,  reeking  as  thev  were  with  the  blood  of 
a  thousand  proscriptions,  and  reckless  as  they  had 
shown  themselves  of  every  civil  right  and  social  obli- 
gation. As  little,  therefore,  was  he  inclined  to  follow 
the  example  of  others  of  his  distinguished  friends  and 
rompanions  in  arms,  such  as  Valerius  Messalla  and 
iElius  Lamius,  who  not  merely  made  their  peace  with 
(Vntony  and  Octavius,  but  cemented  it  by  taking  ser- 
vice in  their  army. 


CHAPTER    IL 

*     RF1TTRNS   TO    ROME   AFTER  BATTLE   OF   PHILIPPI. — 

EARLY   POEMS. 

Availing  himself  of  the  amnesty  proclaimed  by  the 
conquerors,  Horace  found  his  way  back  to  Rome.  His 
father  was  dead ;  how  long  before  is  not  known.  If 
the  little  property  at  Venusium  had  remained  unsold, 
it  was  of  course  confiscated.  When  the  lands  of  men, 
like  Virgil,  who  had  taken  no  active  part  in  the 
political  conflicts  of  the  day,  were  being  seized  to 
satisfy  the  rapacity  of  a  mercenary  soldiery,  Horace's 
paternal  acres  were  not  likely  to  escape.  In  Rome 
he  found  himself  penniless.  How  to  live  was  the 
question  ;  and,  fortunately  for  literature,  "  chill  pen- 
ury "  did  not  repress,  but,  on  the  contrary,  stimulated 
his  "  noble  rage." 

"Bated  in  spirit,  and  with  pinions  clipped, 
Of  all  the  means  my  father  left  me  stripped, 
Want  stared  me  in  the  face,  so  then  and  there 
I  took  to  scribbling  verse  in  sheer  despair." 

Despoiled  of  his  means,   and  smarting  with    defeat, 
Horace  was  just  in  the  state  of  mind  to  strike  vigor- 
a.  c.  vol.  vi.  B 


18  HORACE. 

ously  at  men  and  manners  which  he  did  not  like. 
Young,  ardent,  constitutionally  hot  in  temper,  eager  to 
assert,  amid  the  general  chaos  of  morals  public  and 
private,  the  higher  principles  of  the  philosophic  schools 
from  which  he  had  so  recently  come,  irritated  by  the 
thousand  mortifications  to  which  a  man  of  cultivated 
tastes  and  keenly  alive  to  beauty  is  exposed  in  a 
luxurious  city,  where  the  prizes  he  values  most  are 
carried  off,  yet  scarcely  valued,  by  the  wealthy  vulgar, 
he  was  especially  open  to  the  besetting  temptation  of 
clever  young  men  to  write  satire,  and  to  write  it  in  a 
merciless  spirit.     As  he  says  of  himself  (Odes,  I.  15), 

"  In  youth's  pleasant  spring-time, 
The  shafts  of  my  passion  at  random  I  flung, 
And,  dashing  headlong  into  petulant  rhyme, 

I  recked  neither  where  nor  how  fiercely  I  stung." 

Youth  is  always  intolerant,  and  it  is  so  easy  to  be  se- 
vere; so  seductive  to  say  brilliant  things,  whether  they 
be  true  or  not.  But  there  came  a  day,  and  it  came 
soon,  when  Horace  saw  that  triumphs  gained  in  this 
way  were  of  little  value,  and  when  he  was  anxious 
that  his  friends  should  join  with  him  in  consigning 
his  smart  and  scurril  lines  (celeres  et  criminosos  Iambos) 
to  oblivion.  The  amende  for  some  early  lampoon 
Avhich  he  makes  in  the  Ode  just  quoted,  though  osten 
sibly  addressed  to  a  lady  who  had  been  its  victim, 
was  probably  intended  to  cover  a  wider  field. 

Personal  satire  is  always  popular,  but  the  fame  it 
begets  is  bought  dearly  at  the  cost  of  lifelong  enmities 
and  many  after -regrets.       That  Horace  in  his  early 


DIATRIBE  OX  MEN  AS.  19 

writings  was  personal  and  abusive  is  very  clear,  both 
from  his  own  language  and  from  a  few  of  the  poems 
of  this  class  and  period  which  survive.  Some  of 
these  have  no  value,  except  as  showing  how  badly  even 
Horace  could  write,  and  how  sedulously  the  better 
feeling  and  better  taste  of  his  riper  years  led  him  to 
avoid  that  most  worthless  form  of  satire  which  attacks 
where  rejoinder  is  hapossible,  and  irritates  the  temper 
but  cannot  possibly  amend  the  heart.  In  others,  the 
lash  is  applied  with  no  less  justice  than  vigour,  as  in 
the  following  invective,  the  fourth  of  the  Epodes  : — 

"  Such  hate  as  nature  meant  to  be 
'Twixt  lamb  and  wolf  I  feel  for  thee, 
Whose  hide  by  Spanisli  scourge  is  tanned, 
And  leers  still  bear  the  fetter's  brand  ! 
Though  of  your  gold  you  strut  so  vain, 
Wealth  cannot  change  the  knave  in  grain. 
How  !  see  you  not,  when  striding  down 
The  Via  Sacra*  in  your  gown 
Good  six  ells  wide,  the  passers  there 
Turn  on  you  with  indignant  stare  1 
'This  wretch,'  such  gibes  your  ear  invade, 
*  By  the  Triumvirs'  f  scourges  flayed, 
Till  even  the  crier  shirked  his  toil, 
Some  thousand  acres  ploughs  of  soil 
Falernian,  and  with  his  nags 
Wears  out  the  Appian  highway's  flags  ; 
Nay,  on  the  foremost  seats,  despite 
Of  Otho,  sits  and  apes  the  knight. 

*  The  Sacred  Way,  leading  to  the  Capitol,  a  favourite  lounge 
t  When  a  slave  was  being  scourged,  under  the  orders  of  tbn 

Triumviri  Capitales,  a  public  crier  stood  by,  and  proclaimed  ttw 

nature  of  his  crime. 


^0  HORACE. 

What  boots  it  to  despatch  a  fleet 
So  large,  so  heavy,  so  complete, 
Against  a  gang  of  rascal  knaves, 
Thieves,  corsairs,  "buccaneers,  and  slaves, 
If  villain  of  such  vulgar  breed 
Is  in  the  foremost  rank  to  lead  ? '" 

Modern  critics  may  differ  as  to  whom  this  bitter 
invective  was  aimed  at,  but  there  could  have  been 
no  doubt  on  that  subject  in  Borne  at  the  time.  And 
if, "as  there  is  every  reason  to  conclude,  it  was  levelled 
at  Sextus  Menas,  the  lines,  when  first  shown  about 
among  Horace's  friends,  must  have  told  with  great 
effect,  and  they  were  likely  to  be  remembered  long 
after  the  infamous  career  of  this  double-dyed  traitor 
had  come  to  a  close.  Menas  was  a  freedman  of 
Pompey  the  Great,  and  a  trusted  officer  of  his  son 
Sextus.*  He  had  recently  (b.c.  38)  carried  over  with, 
him  to  Augustus  a  portion  of  Pompey's  fleet  which 
was  under  his  command,  and  betrayed  into  his  hands 
the  islands  of  Corsica  and  Sardinia.  For  this  act  of 
treachery  he  was  loaded-  with  wealth  and  honours  ; 
and  when  Augustus,  next  year,  fitted  out  a  naval  ex- 
pedition against  Sextus  Pompeius,  Menas  received  a 
command.  It  was  probably  lucky  for  Horace  that 
this  swaggering  upstart,  who  was  not  likely  to  be 
scrupulous  as  to  his  means  of  revenge,  went  over  the 
very  next  year  to  his  former  master,  whom  he  again 
abandoned  within  a  year  to  sell  himself  once  more 

*  Shakespeare  lias  introduced  him  in  "Antony  and  Cleopatra," 
along  with  Menecrates  and  Varrius,  as  "  friends  to  Sextus 
Pompeius." 


THE  SIXTEENTH  EPODE.  21 

to  Augustus.  That  astute  politician  put  it  out  of  his 
power  to  play  further  tricks  with  the  fleet,  by  giving 
him  a  command  in  Pannonia,  where  he  was  killed, 
B.C.  36,  at  the  siege  of  Siscia,  the  modern  Sissek. 

Though  Horace  was  probably  best  known  in  Rome 
in  these  early  days  as  a  writer  of  lampoons  and  satirical 
poems,  in  which  the  bitterness  of  his  models  Archilo- 
chus  and  Lucilius  was  aimed  at,  not  very  successfully — 
for  bitterness  and  personal  rancour  were  not  natural  to 
the  man — he  showed  in  other  concessions  signs  of 
the  true  poetic  spirit,  which  afterwards  found  expres- 
sion in  the  consummate  grace  and  finish  of  his  Odes. 
To  this  class  belongs  the  following  poem  (Epode  16), 
which,  from  internal  evidence,  appears  to  have  been 
written  B.C.  40,  when  the  state  of  Italy,  convulsed  by 
civil  war,  was  well  calculated  to  fdl  him  with  despair. 
Horace  had  frequent  occasion  between  this  period 
and  the  battle  of  Actium,  when  the  defeat  and  death 
of  Antony  closed  the  long  struggle  for  supremacy  be- 
tween him  and  Octavius,  to  appeal  to  his  country- 
men against  the  waste  of  the  best  blood  of  Italy  in 
civil  fray,  which  might  have  been  better  spent  in 
subduing  a  foreign  foe,  and  spreading  the  lustre  of  the 
Roman  arms.  But  if  we  are  to  suppose  this  poem 
written  when  the  tidings  of  the  bloody  incidents  of 
the  Perusian  campaign  had  arrived  in  Pome,  —  the 
reduction  of  the  town  of  Perusia  by  famine,  and  the 
massacre  of  from  two  to  three  hundred  prisoners,  al- 
most all  of  equestrian  or  senatorial  rank,  —  we  can 
well  understand  the  feeling  under  which  the  poem  is 
written. 


22  HORACE. 

To  the  Roman  People. 

Another  age  in  civil  wars  will  soon  be  spent  and  worn, 
And  by  her  native  strength  our  Rome  be  wrecked  and  over- 
borne, 
That  Rome,  the  Marsians  could  not  crush,  who  border  on 

our  lands, 
Nor  the  shock  of  threatening  Porsena  with  his  Etruscan 

bands, 
Nor  Capua's  strength  that  rivalled  ours,  nor  Spartacus  the 

stern, 
Nor  the  faithless  Allobrogian,  who  still  for  change  cloth 

yearn. 
Ay,  what  Germania's  blue-eyed  youth  quelled  not  with 

ruthless  sword, 
Nor  Hannibal  by  our  great  sires  detested  and  abhorred, 
We  shall  destroy  with  impious  hands  imbrued  in  brother's 

gore, 
And  wild  beasts  of  the  wood  shall  range  our  native  land 

once  more. 
A  foreign  foe,  alas  !  shall  tread  The  City's  ashes  down, 
And  his  horse's  ringing  hoofs  shall  smite  her  places  of 

renown, 
And  the  bones  of  great  Quirinus,  now  religiously  enshrined 
Shall  be  flung  by  sacrilegious  hands  to  the  sunshine  and  the 

wind. 
And  if  ye  all  from  ills  so  dire  ask  how  yourselves  to  free, 
Or  such  at  least  as  would  not  hold  your  lives  unworthily, 
No  better  counsel  can  I  urge,  than  that  which  erst  inspired 
The  stout  Phocaeans  when  from  their  doomed  city  they  re- 
tired, 
Their  fields,  their  household  gods,  their  shrines  surrender- 
ing as  a  prey 
To  the  wild  boar  and  the  ravening  wolf ;  *  so  we,  in  our 
dismay, 

*  Tim.  story  of  the  Phocieans  is  told  by  Herodotus  (Ch.  165). 


THE  HAPPY  ISLES.  23 

Where'er  our  wandering  steps  may  chance  to  carry  us  should 

go, 
Or  wheresoe'er  across  the  seas  the  fitful  winds  may  blow. 

How  think  ye  then  1  If  better  course  none  offer,  why  should 

we 
Not  seize  the  happy  auspices,  and  boldly  put  to  sea  ? 
But  let  us  swear  this  oath ; — "  Whene'er,  if  e'er  shall  come 

the  time, 
Rocks  upwards  from  the  deep  shall  float,  return  shall  not 

be  crime  ; 
Nor  we  be  loath  to  back  our  sails,  the  ports  of  home  to  seek, 
When  the  waters  of  the  Po  shall  lave  Matinum's  rifted  peak. 
Or  skyey  Apenninus  down  into  the  sea  be  rolled, 
Or  wild  unnatural  desires  such  monstrous  revel  hold, 
That  in  the  stag's  endearments  the  tigress  shall  delight, 
And  the  turtle-dove  adulterate  with  the  falcon  and  the 

kite, 
That  unsuspicious  herds  no  more  shall  tawny  lions  fear, 
And  the  he-goat,  smoothly  sleek  of  skin,  through  the  briny 

deep  career  !  " 
This  having  sworn,  and  what  beside  may  our  returning  stay, 
Straight  let  us  all,  this  City's  doomed  inhabitants,  away, 
Or  those  that  rise  above  the  herd,  the  few  of  nobler  soul ; 
The  craven  and  the  hopeless  here  on  their  ill-starred  beds 

may  loll. 
Y"e  who  can  feel  and  act  like  men,  this  woman's  wail  give 

o'er, 
And  fly  to  regions  far  away  beyond  the  Etruscan  shore  ' 

When  their  city  was  attacked  by  Harpagus,  they  retired  in  a 
body  to  make  way  for  the  Persians,  who  took  possession  of  it. 
They  subsequently  returned,  and  put  to  the  sword  the  Persian 
garrison  which  had  been  left  in  it  by  Harpagus.  "  Afterwards, 
when  this  was  accomplished,  they  pronounced  terrible  impreca- 
tions on  any  who  should  desert  the  fleet ;  besides  this,  they  sunk 
a  mass  of  molten  iron,  and  swore  that  they  would  never  return 
to  Phocsea  until  it  should  appear  again." 


24  -      HORACE. 

The  circling  ocean  waits  us  ;  then  away,  where  nature 

smiles, 
To  those  fair  lands,  those  blissful  lands,  the  rich  and  happy 

Isles  ! 
Where  Ceres  year  by  year  crowns  all  the  untilled  land  with 

sheaves, 
And  the  vine  with  purple  clusters  droops,  unpruned  of  all 

her  leaves  ; 
Where  the  olive  buds  and  burgeons,  to  its  promise  ne'er 

untrue, 
And  the  russet  fig  adorns  the  tree,  that  graffshoot  never 

knew  ; 
Where  honey  from  the  hollow  oaks  doth  ooze,  and  crystal 

rills 
Come  dancing  down  with  tinkling  feet  from  the  sky-divid- 
ing hills  ; 
There  to  the  pails  the  she-goats  come,  without  a  master's 

word, 
And  home  with  udders  brimming  broad  returns  the  friendly 

herd. 
There  round  the  fold  no  surly  bear  its  midnight  prowl  doth 

make, 
Nor  teems  the  rank  and  heaving  soil  with  the  adder  and  the 

snake ; 
There  no  contagion  smites  the  flocks,  nor  blight  of  any  star 
With  fury  of  remorseless  heat  the  sweltering  herds  doth 

mar. 
Nor  this  the  only  bliss  that  waits  us  there,  where  drenching 

rains 
By  watery  Eurus  swept  along  ne'er  devastate  the  plains, 
Nor  are  the  swelling  seeds  burnt  up  within  the  thirsty  clods, 
So  kindly  blends  the  seasons  there  the  King  of  all  the  Gods. 
That  shore  the  Argonautic  bark's  stout  rowers  never  gained, 
Nor  the  wily  she  of  Colchis  with  step  unchaste  profaned  ; 
The  sails  of  Sidon's  galleys  ne'er  were  wafted  to  that  strand, 
Nor  ever  rested  on  its  slopes  Ulysses'  toilworn  band : 


THE  HAPPY  ISLES.  25 

For  Jupiter,  when  he  with  brass  the  Golden  Age  alloyed, 
That  blissful  region  set  apart  by  the  good  to  be  enjoyed  ; 
With  brass  and  then  with  iron  he  the  ages  seared,  but  ye, 
Good  men  and  true,  to  that  bright  home  arise  and  follow 
me! 

This  poem,  Lord  Lytton  has  truly  said,  "has  the 
character  of  youth  in  its  defects  and  its  beauties.  The 
redundance  of  its  descriptive  passages  is  in  marked 
contrast  to  the  terseness  of  description  which  Horace 
studies  in  his  Odes ;  and  there  is  something  declama- 
tory in  its  general  tone  which  is  at  variance  with  the 
simpler  utterance  of  lyrical  art.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  has  all  the  warmth  of  genuine  passion,  and  in 
sheer  vigour  of  composition  Horace  has  rarely  excelled 
it." 

The  idea  of  the  Happy  Isles,  referred  to  in  the 
poem,  was  a  familiar  one  with  the  Greek  poets.  They 
became  in  time  confounded  with  the  Elysian  fields,  in 
which  the  spirits  of  the  departed  good  and  great  en- 
joyed perpetual  rest.  It  is  as  such  that  Ulysses  men- 
tions them  in  Tennyson's  noble  monologue  : — 

u  It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  shall  wash  us  down, 
It  may  be  we  shall  reach  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles,  whom  we  knew." 

These  islands  were  supposed  to  be  in  the  far  west,  and 
were  probably  the  poetical  amplification  of  some  voy- 
ager's account  of  the  Canaries  or  of  Madeira.  There 
has  always  been  a  region  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
civilisation  to  which  the  poet's  fancy  has  turned  for 
ideal  happiness  and  peace.      The  difference  between 


26  HORACE. 

ancient  and  modern  is,  that  material  comforts,  as  in  this 
epode,  enter  laigely  into  the  dream  of  the  ancient, 
while  independence,  beauty,  and  grandeur  are  the  chief 
elements  in  the  modern  picture  : — 

"  Larger  constellations  burning,  mellow  moons  and  happy 

skies, 
Breadth  of  Tropic  shade  and  palms  in  cluster,  knots  of 

Paradise. 
Never  comes  the  trader,  never  floats  an  European  flag, 
Slides  the  bird  o'er  lustrous  woodland,  droops  the  trailer 

from  the  crag  ; 
Droops  the  heavy-blossomed  bower,  hangs  the  heavy-fruited 

tree. 
Summer  Isles  of  Eden  lying  in  dark-purple  spheres  of  sea.' 

To  the  same  class  of  Horace's  early  poems,  though  pro- 
bably a  few  years  later  in  date,  belongs  the  following 
eulogium  of  a  country  life  and  its  innocent  enjoyments 
(Epode  2),  the  leading  idea  of  which  was  embodied 
by  Pope  in  the  familiar  lines,  wonderful  for  finish  as 
the  production  of  a  boTr  of  eleven,  beginning 

"Happy  the  man  whose  wish  and  care 
A  few  paternal  acres  bound." 

With  characteristic  irony  Horace  puts  his  fancies  into 
the  mouth  of  Alphius,  a  miserly  money-lender.  ]So 
one  yearns  so  keenly  for  the  country  and  its  imagined 
peace  as  the  overworked  city  man,  when  his  pulse  is 
low  and  his  spirits  weary  with  had  air  and  the  reaction 
of  over-excitement  ;  no  one,  as  a  rile,  is  more  apt  to 
tire  of  the  homely  and  uneventful  life  which  the  country 
oilers,   or  to  find  that,  for  him  at  least,   its  quietude 


ALPHIUS.  27 

does  not  bring  peace.  It  is  not,  therefore,  at  all  out 
of  keeping,  although  critics  have  taken  exception  to 
the  poem  on  this  ground,  that  Horace  makes  Alphius 
rhapsodise  on  the  charms  of  a  rural  life,  and  having 
tried  them,  creep  hack  within  the  year  to  his  money- 
bags and  his  ten  per  cent.  It  was,  besides,  a  favour- 
ite doctrine  with  him,  which  he  is  constantly  enforc- 
ing in  his  later  works,  that  everybody  envies  his 
neighbour's  pursuits — until  he  tries  them. 

Alphius. 

Happy  the  man,  in  busy  schemes  unskilled, 
"Who,  living  simply,  like  our  sires  of  old, 

Tills  the  few  acres,  which  his  father  tilled, 
Vexed  by  no  thoughts  of  usury  or  gold  ; 

The  shrilling  clarion  ne'er  his  slumber  mars, 
Nor  quails  he  at  the  howl  of  angry  seas  ; 

He  shuns  the  forum,  with  its  wordy  jars, 
Nor  at  a  great  man's  door  consents  to  freeze. 

The  tender  vine-shoots,  budding  into  life, 
He  with  the  stately  poplar-tree  doth  wed, 

Lopping  the  fruitless  branches  with  his  knife, 
And  grafting  shoots  of  promise  in  their  stead ; 

Or  in  some  valley,  up  among  the  hills, 

Watches  his  wandering  herds  of  lowing  kine, 

Or  fragrant  jars  with  liquid  honey  fills, 
Or  shears  his  silly  sheep  in  sunny  shine  ; 

Or  when  Autumnus  o'er  the  smiling  land 
Lifts  up  his  head  with  rosy  apples  crowned, 

Joyful  he  plucks  the  pears,  which  erst  his  hand 

Graffed  on  the  stem  they're  weighing  to  the  ground ; 


28  HORACE. 

Plucks  grapes  in  nol>le  clusters  purple-dyed, 
A  gift  for  thee,  Priapus,  and  for  thee, 

Father  Sylvanus,  where  thou  dost  preside, 
Warding  his  bounds  beneath  thy  sacred  tree. 

Now  he  may  stretch  his  careless  limbs  to  rest, 
Where  some  old  ilex  spreads  its  sacred  root; 

Now  in  the  sunshine  lie,  as  likes  him  best, 
On  grassy  turf  of  close  elastic  woof. 

And  streams  the  while  glide  on  with  murmurs  low, 
And  birds  are  singing  'mong  the  thickets  deep, 

And  fountains  babble,  sparkling  as  they  flow, 
And  with  their  noise  invite  to  gentle  sleep. 

But  when  grim  winter  comes,  and  o'er  his  grounds 
Scatters  its  biting  snows  with  angry  roar, 

He  takes  the  field,  and  with  a  cry  of  hounds 
Hunts  down  into  the  toils  the  foaming  boar  ; 

Or  seeks  the  thrush,  poor  starveling,  to  ensnare, 
In  filmy  net  with  bait  delusive  stored, 

Entraps  the  travelled  crane,  and  timorous  hare, 
Hare  dainties  these  to  glad  his  frugal  board. 

Who  amid  joys  like  these  would  not  forget 
The  pangs  which  love  to  all  its  victims  bears, 

The  fever  of  the  brain,  the  ceaseless  fret, 

And  all  the  heart's  lamentings  and  despairs  ? 

But  if  a  chaste  and  blooming  wife,  beside, 

The  cheerful  home  with  sweet  young  blossoms  fillSj 

Like  some  stout  Sabine,  or  the  sunburnt  bride 
Of  the  lithe  peasant  of  the  Apulian  hills 

Who  piles  the  hearth  with  logs  well  dried  and  old 
Against  the  coming  of  her  wearied  lord, 

And,  when  at  eve  the  cattle  seek  the  fold, 
Drains  their  full  udders  of  the  milky  hoard  ; 


HIS  PEASANTS  DRAWN  FROM  NATURE.       29 


And  bringing  forth  from  her  well-tended  store 

A  jar  of  wine,  the  vintage  of  the  year, 
Spreads  an  unpurchased  feast, — oh  then,  not  more 

Could  choicest  Lucrine  oysters  give  me  cheer, 

Or  the  rich  turbot,  or  the  dainty  char, 

If  ever  to  our  bays  the  winter's  blast 
Should  drive  them  in  its  fury  from  afar ; 

Nor  were  to  me  a  welcomer  repast 

The  Afric  hen  or  the  Ionic  snipe, 

Than  olives  newly  gathered  from  the  tree, 

That  hangs  abroad  its  clusters  rich  and  ripe, 
Or  sorrel,  that  doth  love  the  pleasant  lea, 

Or  mallows  wholesome  for  the  body's  need, 
Or  lamb  foredoomed  upon  some  festal  day 

In  offering  to  the  guardian  gods  to  bleed, 

Or  kidling  which  the  wolf  hath  marked  for  prey. 

What  joy,  amidst  such  feasts,  to  see  the  sheep, 
Full  of  the  pasture,  hurrying  homewards  come ; 

To  see  the  wearied  oxen,  as  they  creep, 

Dragging  the  upturned  ploughshare  slowly  home  ! 

Or,  ranged  around  the  bright  and  blazing  hearth, 
To  see  the  hinds,  a  house's  surest  wealth, 

Beguile  the  evening  with  their  simple  mirth, 
And  all  the  cheerfulness  of  rosy  health  ! 

Thus  spake  the  miser  Alphius  ;  and,  bent 

Upon  a  country  life,  called  in  amain 
The  money  he  at  usury  had  lent ; — 

But  ere  the  month  was  out,  'twas  lent  again. 

In  this  charming  sketch  of  the  peasant's  life  it  is 
&asy  to  see  that  Horace  is  drawing  from  nature,  like 
Burns  in  his  more  elaborate  picture  of  the  "  Cottar's 


! 


30  HORACE. 

Saturday  Night."  Horace  had  obviously  watched  closely 
the  ways  of  the  peasantry  round  his  Apulian  home,  as 
he  did  at  a  later  date  those  of  the  Sabine  country,  and 
to  this  we  owe  many  of  the  most  delightful  passages 
in  his  works.  He  omits  no  opportunity  of  contrasting 
their  purity  of  morals,  and  the  austere  self-denial  of 
their  life,  with  the  luxurious  habits  and  reckless  vice  of 
the  city  life  of  Rome.  Thus,  in  one  of  the  finest  of  his 
Odes  (Book  III.  G),  after  painting  with  a  few  masterly 
strokes  what  the  matrons  and  the  fast  young  ladies  of 
the  imperial  city  had  become,  it  was  not  from  such  as 
these,  he  continues,  that  the  noble  youth  sprang  "  who 
dved  the  seas  with  Carthaginian  gore,  overthrew  Pvr- 
rhus  and  great  Antiochus  and  direful  Hannibal,"  con- 
cluding in  words  which  contrast  by  their  suggestive 
terseness  at  the  same  time  that  they  suggest  comparison 
with  the  elaborated  fulness  of  the  epode  just  quoted  : — 

"  But  they,  of  rustic  warriors  wight 
The  manly  offspring,  learned  to  smite 

The  soil  with  Sabine  spade, 
And  faggots  they  had  cut,  to  bear 
Home  from  the  forest,  whensoe'er 

An  austere  mother  hade  ; 

"What  time  the  sun  began  to  change 
The  shadows  through  the  mountain  range, 

And  took  the  yoke  away 
From  the  o'erwearied  oxen,  and 
His  parting  car  proclaimed  at  hand 

The  kindliest  hour  of  day." 

Another  of  Horace's   juvenile  poems,  unique  in  sub- 
ject and  in  treatment  (Epode  5),  gives  evidence  of  a 


THE    WITCHES'   ORGY.  31 

picturesque  power  of  the  highest  kind,  stimulating  the 
imagination,  and  swaying  it  with  the  feelings  of  pity  and 
terror  in  a  way  to  make  us  regret  that  lie  wrote  no  others 
in  a  similar  vein.  We  rind  ourselves  at  midnight  in  the 
gardens  of  the  sorceress  Canidia,  whither  a  buy  of  good 
family — his  rank  heing  clearly  indicated  by  the  refer- 
ence to  his  purple  totja  and  bulla — has  been  carried  oif 
from  his  home.  His  terrified  exclamations,  with  which 
the  poem  opens,  as  Canidia  and  her  three  assistants 
surround  him,  glaring  on  him,  with  looks  significant  of 
their  deadly  purpose,  through  lurid  flames  fed  with 
the  usual  ghastly  ingredients  of  a  witch's  fire,  carry 
us  at  once  into  the  horrors  of  the  scene.  While  one 
of  the  hags  sprinkles  her  hell-drops  through  the  ad- 
joining house,  another  is  casting  up  earth  from  a  pit, 
in  which  the  boy  is  presently  imbedded  to  the  chin, 
and  killed  by  a  frightful  process  of  slow  torture,  in 
order  that  a  love  philtre  of  irresistible  power  may  be 
concocted  from  his  liver  and  spleen.  The  time,  the 
place,  the  actors  are  brought  before  us  with  singular 
dramatic  power.  Canidia's  burst  of  wonder  and  rage 
that  the  spells  she  deemed  all-powerful  have  been  coun- 
teracted by  some  sorceress  of  skill  superior  to  her  own, 
gives  great  reality  to  the  scene  ;  and  the  curses  of  the 
dying  boy,  launched  with  tragic  vigour,  and  closing  with 
a  touch  of  beautiful  pathos,  bring  it  to  an  effective  close. 
The  speculations  as  to  who  and  what  Canidia  was, 
in  which  scholars  have  run  riot,  are  conspicuous  for 
absurdity,  even  among  the  wild  and  ridiculous  conjec- 
tures as  to  the  personages  named  by  Horace  in  which 
the  commentators  have  indulged.      That  some  well- 


32  HORACE. 

known  person  was  the  original  of  Canidia  is  extremely 
probable,  for  professors  of  witchcraft  abounded  at  the 
time,  combining  very  frequently,  like  their  modern  suc- 
cessors, the  arts  of  Medea  with  the  attributes  of  Dame 
Quickly.     What  more  natural  than  for  a  young  poet 
to  work  up  an  effective  picture  out  of  the  abundant 
su<"A,stions  which  the  current  stories  of  such  creatures 
ami  their  doings  presented  to  his  hand  1     The  popular 
belief  in  their  power,  the  picturesque  conditions  under 
which  their  spells  were  wrought,  the  wild  passions  in 
which  lay  the  secret  of  their  hold  upon  the  credulity 
of  their  victims,  offered  to  the  Roman  poet,  just  as 
they  did  to  our  own  Elizabethan  dramatists,  a  combina- 
tion of  materials  most  favourable  for  poetic  treatment. 
But  that  Horace  had,  as  many  of  his  critics  contend,  a 
feeling  of  personal  vanity,  the  pique  of  a  discarded 
lover,  to  avenge,  is  an  assumption  wholly  without  war- 
rant.    He  was  the  last  man,  at  any  time  or  under  any 
circumstances,  to  have  had  any  relations  of  a  personal 
nature  with  a  woman   of  Canidia's  class.      However 
inclined  he  may  have  been  to  use  her  and  her  prac- 
tices for  poetic  purposes,  he  manifestly  not  only  saw 
through  the  absurdity  of  her  pretensions,  but  laughed 
at  her  miserable   impotence,   and   meant   that   others 
should   do  the  same.      It   seems  to   be  impossible  to 
read  the  8th  of  his  First  Book  of  his  Satires,  and  not 
come  to  this  conclusion.     That  satire  consists  of  the 
monologue  of  a  garden  god,  set  up  in  the  garden  which 
Maecenas  had  begun  to  lay  out  on  the  Esquiline  Hill. 
This  spot  had  until  recently  been  the  burial-ground  of 
the  Roman  poor,  a  quarter  noisome  by  day,  and  the 


CANIDJA    ON  THE  ESQUILINE.  33 

haunt  of  thieves  and  beasts  of  prey  by  night.  On  this 
obscene  spot,  littered  with  skulls  and  dead  men's  bones, 
Canidia  and  her  accomplice  Sagana  are  again  introduced, 
digging  a  pit  with  their  nails,  into  which  they  pour 
the  blood  of  a  coal-black  ewe,  which  they  had  pre- 
viously torn  limb-meal, 

"  So  to  evoke  the  shade  and  soul 
Of  dead  men,  and  from  these  to  wring 
Responses  to  their  questioning." 

They  have  with  them  two  effigies,  one  of  wax  and 
the  other  of  wool — the  latter  the  larger  of  the  two, 
and  overbearing  the  other,  which  cowers  before  it, 

"  Like  one  that  stands 
Beseeching  in  the  hangman's  hands. 
On  Hecate  one,  Tisiphone 
The  other  calls  ;  and  you  might  see 
Serpents  and  hell-hounds  thread  the  dark, 
Whilst,  these  vile  orgies  not  to  mark, 
The  moon,  all  bloody  red  of  hue, 
Behind  the  massive  tombs  withdrew." 

The  hags  pursue  their  incantations  ;  higher  and  higher 
flames  their  ghastly  fire,  and  the  grizzled  wolves  and 
spotted  snakes  slink  in  terror  to  their  holes,  as  the 
shrieks  and  muttered  spells  of  the  beldams  make  the 
moon-forsaken  night  more  hideous.  But  after  piling 
up  his  horrors  with  the  most  elaborate  skill,  as  if  in 
the  view  of  some  terrible  climax,  the  poet  makes  them 
collapse  into  utter  farce.  Disgusted  by  their  intrusion 
on  his  privacy,  the  Priapus  adopts  a  simple  but  ex- 
ceedingly vulgar  expedient  to  alarm  these  appalling 
hags.  In  an  instant  they  fall  into  the  most  abject 
a.  o.  vol.  vi.  0 


34  HORACE. 

terror,  suspend  their  incantations,  and,  tucking  up  their 
skirts,  make  off  for  the  more  comfortable  quarters  of 
the  city  as  fast  as  their  trembling  limbs  can  carry 
them — Canidia,  the  great  enchantress,  dropping  her 
false  teeth,  and  her  attendant  Sagana  partiug  company 
with  her  wig,  by  the  way  : — 

"While  you 
With  laughter  long  and  loud  might  view 
Their  herbs,  and  charmed  adders  wound 
In  mystic  coils,  bestrew  the  ground." 

And  yet  grave  scholars  gravely  ask  us  to  believe 
that  Canidia  was  an  old  mistress  of  the  poet's !  These 
poems  evidently  made  a  success,  and  Horace  returned 
to  the  theme  in  his  17th  Epode.  Here  he  writes  as 
toough  he  had  been  put  under  a  spell  by  Canidia,  in 
revenge  for  his  former  calumnies  about  her. 

"  My  youth  has  fled,  my  rosy  hue 
Turned  to  a  wan  and  livid  blue  ; 
Blanched  by  thy  mixtures  is  my  hair  ; 
No  respite  have  I  from  despair. 
The  days  and  nights,  they  wax  and  wane, 
Yet  bring  me  no  release  from  pain  ; 
Nor  can  I  ease,  howe'er  I  gasp, 
The  spasm,  which  holds  me  in  its  grasp." 

Here  we  have  all  the  well-known  symptoms  of  a 
man  under  a  malign  magical  influence.  In  this  ex- 
tremity Horace  affects  to  recant  all  the  mischief  he  has 
formerly  spoken  of  the  enchantress.  Let  her  name  what 
penance  he  will,  he  is  ready  to  perform  it.  If  a  hun- 
dred steers  will  appease  her  wrath,  they  are  hers ;  or 
if  she  prefers  to  be  sung  of  as  the  chaste  and  good,  and 


CAN1DIA    AND  HORACE.  35 

to  range  above  the  spheres  as  a  golden  star,  his  lyre  is 
at  her  service.  Her  parentage  is  as  unexceptionable  as 
her  life  is  pure,  but  while  ostentatiously  disclaiming  his 
libels,  the  poet  takes  care  to  insinuate  them  anew,  by 
apostrophising  her  in  conclusion,  thus  : — 

"  Thou  who  dost  ne'er  in  haglike  wont 
Among  the  tombs  of  paupers  hunt 
For  ashes  newly  laid  in  ground, 
Love-charms  and  philtres  to  compound, 
Thy  heart  is  gentle,  pure  thy  hands." 

Of  course,  Canidia  is  not  mollified  by  such  a  recan- 
tation as  this.     The  man  who, 

"  Branding  her  name  with  ill  renown, 
Made  her  the  talk  of  all  the  town," 

is  not  so  lightly  to  be  forgiven. 

"  You'd  have  a  speedy  doom  ?     But  no, 
It  shall  be  lingering,  sharp,  and  slow." 

The  pangs  of  Tantalus,  of  Prometheus,  or  of  Sisyphus 
are  but  the  types  of  what  his  shall  be.     Let  him  try  to 
hang,  drown,  stab  himself — his  efforts  will  be  vain : — 

"  Then  comes  my  hour  of  triumph,  then 
I'll  goad  you  till  you  writhe  again  ; 
Then  shall  you  curse  the  evil  hour 
You  made  a  mockery  of  my  power." 

She  then  triumphantly  reasserts  the  powers  to  which 
she  lavs  claim.  What!  I,  she  exclaims,  who  can  waste 
life  as  the  waxen  image  of  my  victim  melts  before  my 
magic  fire* — T,  who  can  bring  down  the  moon  from  her 

*  Thus  Hecate  in  Middleton's  "  Witch  "  assures  to  the  Duchess 
of  Glo'ster  "  a  sudden  and  subtle  death"  to  her  victim  :— 


36  110  RACK. 

sphere,  evoke  the  dead  from  their  ashes,  and  turn  the 
affections  by  my  philtres, — 

"  Shall  I  my  potent  art  bemoan 
As  impotent  'gainst  thee  alone  ?  " 

Surely  all  this  is  as  purely  the  work  of  imagination 
as  Middleton's  "  Witch,"  or  the  Hags  in  "  Macbeth," 
or  in  Goethe's  '  Faust.'  Horace  used  Canidia  as  a 
byword  for  all  that  was  hateful  in  the  creatures  of  her 
craft,  filthy  as  they  were  in  their  lives  and  odious  in 
their  persons.  His  literary  and  other  friends  were  as 
familiar  with  her  name  in  this  sense  as  we  are  with 
those  of  Squeers  and  Micawber,  as  types  of  a  class ; 
and.  the  joke  was  well  understood  when,  many  years 
after,  in  the  8th  of  his  Second  Book  of  Satires,  he 
said  that  Nasidienus's  dinner-party  broke  up  without 
their  eating  a  morsel  of  the  dishes  after  a  certain  point, 
— "  As  if  a  pestilential  blast  from  Canidia's  throat, 
more  venomous  than  that  of  African  vipers,  had  swept 
across  them." 


"  His  picture  made  in  wax,  and  gently  molten 
By  a  blue  fire,  kindled  with  dead  men's  eyes, 
Will  waste  him  by  degrees." — 

An  old  delusion.  "VVe  find  it  in  Theocritus,  where  a  girl,  for- 
saken by  her  lover,  resorts  to  the  same  desperate  restorative 
(Idylls  ii.  28)— 

"As  this  image  of  wax  I  melt  here  by  aidance  demonic, 
Myndian  Delphis  shall  so  melt  with  love's  passion  anon." 

Again  Ovid  (Heroides  vi.  91)  makes  Hypsipyle  say  of  Medea  : 

"The  absent  she  binds  with  her  spells,    and  figures  of  wax   she 
devises, 
And  in  their  agonised  spleen  fine-pointed  needles  she  thrusts." 


CHAPTER  IIL 

INTRODUCTION  TO  MAECENAS. — THE  JOURNEY  TO  BRUNDUSfUM. 

Horace  had  not  "been  lon^  in  Rome,  after  his  return 
from  Greece,  before  he  had  made  himself  a  name. 
With  what  he  got  from  the  booksellers,  or  possibly  by 
the  help  of  friends,  he  had  purchased  a  patent  place  in 
the  Quaestor's  department,  a  sort  of  clerkship  of  the 
Treasury,  which  he  continued  to  hold  for  many  years, 
if  not  indeed  to  the  close  of  his  life.  The  duties  were 
light,  but  they  demanded,  and  at  all  events  had,  his 
occasional  attention,  even  after  he  was  otherwise  pro- 
vided for.  Being  his  own — bought  by  his  own 
money — it  may  have  gratified  his  love  of  indepen- 
dence to  feel  that,  if  the  wrorst  came  to  the  worst, 
he  had  his  official  salary  to  fall  back  upon.  Among 
his  friends,  men  of  letters  are  at  this  time,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  found  to  be  most  conspicu- 
ous. Virgil,  who  had  recently  been  despoiled,  like 
himself,  of  his  paternal  property,  took  occasion  to  bring 
his  name  before  Maecenas,  the  confidential  adviser  and 
minister  of  Octavius,  in  whom  he  had  himself  found  a 
helpful  friend.     This  was  followed  up  by  the  commen- 


38  HOll  ACE. 

dation  of  Varius,  already  celebrated  as  a  writer  of  Epic 
poetry,  and  whose  tragedy  of  "  Thyestes,"  if  we  are  to 
trust  Quiutilian,  was  not  unworthy  to  rank  with  the 
best  tragedies  of  Greece.  Maecenas  may  not  at  first 
have  been  too  well  disposed  towards  a  follower  of  the 
republican  party,  who  had  not  been  sparing  of  his 
satire  against  many  of  the  supporters  and  favourites  of 
Octavius.  He  sent  for  Horace,  however  (b^o__39}, 
and  any  prejudice  on  this  score,  if  prejudice  there  was, 
was  ultimately  got  over.  Maecenas  took  time  to  form  his 
estimate  of  the  man,  and  it  was  not  till  nine  months 
after  their  first  interview  that  he  sent  for  Horace  again. 
"When  he  did  so,  however,  it  was  to  ask  him  to  con- 
sider himself  for  the  future  among  the  number  of  his 
friends.  This  part  of  Horace's  story  is  told  with  ad- 
mirable brevity  and  good  feeling  in  the  Satire  from 
which  we  have  already  quoted,  addressed  to  Maecenas 
(B.  I.  Sat.  G)  a  few  years  afterwards. 

"  Lucky  I  will  not  call  myself,  as  though 
Thy  friendship  I  to  mere  good  fortune  owe. 
No  chance  it  was  secured  me  thy  regards, 
But  Virgil  first,  that  best  of  men  and  bards, 
And  then  kind  Varius  mentioned  what  I  was. 
Before  you  brought,  with  many  a  faltering  pause, 
Dropping  some  i'ew  brief  words  (for  bashfulness 
Bobbed  me  of  utterance)  I  did  not  profess 
That  I  was  sprung  of  lineage  old  and  great, 
Or  used  to  canter  round  my  own  estate 
On  Satureian  barb,  but  what  and  who 
I  was  as  plainly  told.     As  usual,  you 
Brief  answer  make  me.     I  retire,  and  then, 
Some  nine  months  after,  summoning  me  again, 


MAECENAS.  39 

You  bid  me  'mongst  your  friends  assume  a  place  : 
And  proud  I  feel  that  thus  I  won  your  grace, 
Not  by  an  ancestry  long  known  to  fume, 
But  by  my  life,  and  heart  devoid  of  blame." 

The  name  of  Maecenas  is  from  this  time  inseparably 
associated  with  that  of  Horace.  From  what  little  is 
authentically  known  of  him,  this  much  may  be  gathered ; 
He  was  a  man  of  great  general  accomplishment,  well 
versed  in  the  literature  both,  of  Greece  and  Rome,  de- 
voted to  literature  and  the  society  of  men  of  letters,  a 
lover  of  the  fine  arts  and  of  natural  history,  a  connois- 
seur of  gems  and  precious  stones,  fond  of  living  in  a 
grand  style,  and  of  surrounding  himself  with  people 
who  amused  him,  without  being  always  very  particular 
as  to  who  or  what  thev  were.  For  the  indulgence  of 
all  these  tastes,  his  great  wealth  was  more  than  suffi- 
cient. He  reclaimed  the  Esquiline  hill  from  being  the 
public  nuisance  we  have  already  described,  laid  it  out 
in  gardens,  and  in  the  midst  of  these  built  himself  a 
sumptuous  palace,  where  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria 
Ma^giore  now  stands,  from  which  he  commanded  a 
superb  view  of  the  country  looking  towards  Tivoli. 
To  this  palace,  salubrious  from  its  spacious  size  and  the 
elevation  of  its  site,  Augustus,  when  ill,  had  himself 
carried  from  his  own  modest  mansion ;  and  -from  its 
lofty  belvedere  tower  Nero  is  said  to  have  enjoyed  the 
spectacle  of  Borne  in  flames  beneath  him.  "Voluptuary 
and  dilettante  as  Maecenas  was,  he  was  nevertheless, 
like  most  men  of  a  sombre  and  melancholy  tempera- 
ment, capable  of  great  exertions  ;  and  he  veiled  under  a 
cold  exterior  and  reserved  manners  a  habit  ot  acute 


40  HORACE. 

observation,  a  kind  heart,  and,  in  matters  of  public 
concern,  a  resolute  wilL  This  latent  energy  of  char- 
acter, supported  as  it  "was  by  a  subtle  knowledge  of 
mankind  and  a  statesmanlike  breadth  of  view,  contri- 
buted in  no  small  degree  to  the  ultimate  triumph  of 
Octavius  Ca2sar  over  his  rivals,  and  to  the  successful 
establishment  of  the  empire  in  his  hands.  "When  the 
news  of  Julius  Caesar's  assassination  reached  the  young 
Octavius,  then  only  nineteen,  in  Apollonia,  it  has  been 
said  that  Maecenas  was  in  attendance  upon  him  as  his 
governor  or  tutor.  Be  this  so  or  not,  as  soon  as 
Octavius  appears  in  the  political  arena  as  his  uncle's 
avenger,  Maecenas  is  found  by  his  side.  In  several 
most  important  negotiations  he  acted  as  his  representa- 
tive. Thus  (b.c.  40),  the  year  before  Horace  was  in- 
troduced to  him,  he,  along  with  Cocceius  Nerva,  nego- 
tiated with  Antony  the  peace  of  Brundusium,  which 
resulted  in  Antony's  ill-starred  marriage  with  Caesar's 
sister  Octavia.  Two  years  later  he  was  again  associated 
with  Cocceius  in  a  similar  task,  on  which  occasion 
Horace  and  Virgil  accompanied  him  to  Brundusium. 
He  appears  to  have  commanded  in  various  expeditions, 
both  naval  and  military,  but  it  was  at  Rome  and  in 
Council  that  his  services  were  chiefly  sought ;  and  he 
acted  as  one  of  the  chief  advisers  of  Augustus  down  to 
about  five  years  before  his  death,  when,  either  from  ill 
health  or  some  other  unknown  cause,  he  abandoned 
political  life.  More  than  once  he  was  charged  by 
Augustus  with  the  administration  of  the  civil  affairs 
of  Italy  during  his  own  absence,  intrusted  with  his 
seal,  and  empowered  to  open  all  his  letters  addressed 


MAECENAS.  41 

to  the  Senate,  and,  if  necessary,  to  alter  their  con- 
tents, so  as  to  adapt  them  to  the  condition  of  affairs 
at  home.  His  aim,  like  that  of  Vipsanius  Agrippa, 
who  was  in  himself  the  Nelson  and  Wellington  of 
the  age,  seems  to  have  been  to  build  up  a  united 
and  flourishing  empire  in  the  person  of  Augustus. 
Whether  from  temperament  or  policy,  or  both,  he  set  his 
face  against  the  system  of  cruelty  and  extermination 
which  disgraced  the  triumvirate.  When  Octavius  was 
one  day  condemning  man  after  man  to  death,  Maecenas, 
after  a  vain  attempt  to  reach  him  on  the  tribunal, 
where  he  sat  surrounded  by  a  dense  crowd,  wrote  upon 
his  tablets,  Surge  tandem,  Carnifex  ! — "  Butcher,  break 
off!"  and  flung  them  across  the  crowd  into  the  lap  of 
Caesar,  who  felt  the  rebuke,  and  immediately  quitted 
the  judgment-seat.  His  policy  was  that  of  conciliation  ; 
and  while  bent  on  the  establishment  of  a  monarchy, 
from  what  we  must  fairly  assume  to  have  been  a  pat- 
riotic conviction  that  this  form  of  government  could 
alone  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  time,  he  endeavoured 
to  combine  this  with  a  due  regard  to  individual  liberty, 
and  a  free  expression  of  individual  opinion. 

At  the  time  of  Horace's  introduction  to  him,  Mae- 
cenas was  probably  at  his  best,  in  the  full  vigour  of  his 
intellect,  and  alive  with  the  generous  emotions  which 
must  have  animated  a  man  bent  as  he  was  on  securing 
tranquillity  for  the  state,  and  healing  the  strife  of  fac- 
tions, which  were  threatening  it  with  ruin.  His  chief 
relaxation  from  the  fatigues  of  public  life  was,  to  all 
appearance,  found  in  the  society  of  men  of  letters,  and, 
judging  by  what  Horace  says  (Satires,  I.  9),  the  vie 


42  HORACE. 

intime  of  his  social  circle  must  have  been  charming, 
To  be  admitted  within  it  was  a  privilege  eagerly 
coveted,  and  with  good  reason,  for  not  only  was  this 
in  itself  a  stamp  of  distinction,  but  his  parties  were 
well  kuown  as  the  pleasantest  in  Eome : — 

"  No  house  more  free  from  all  that's  base, 
In  none  cabals  more  out  of  place. 
It  hurts  me  not,  if  others  be 
More  rich,  or  better  read  than  me  ; 
Each  has  his  place." 

Like  many  of  his  contemporaries,  who  were  eminent 
in  political  life,  Maecenas  devoted  himself  to  active 
literary  work — for  he  wrote  much,  and  on  a  variety  of 
topics.  His  taste  in  literature  was,  however,  better 
than  his  execution.  His  style  was  diffuse,  affected, 
and  obscure ;  but  Seneca,  who  tells  us  this,  and  gives 
some  examples  which  justify  the  criticism,  tells  us 
at  the  same  time  that  his  genius  was  massive  and 
masculine  (grande  et  virile),  and  that  he  would  have 
been  eminent  for  eloquence,  if  fortune  had  not  spoiled 
him.  However  vicious  his  own  style  may  have  been, 
the  man  who  encouraged  three  such  writers  as  Virgil, 
Propertius,  and  Horace,  not  to  mention  others  of 
great  repute,  whose  works  have  perished,  was  clearly  a 
sound  judge  of  a  good  style  in  others. 

As  years  went  on,  and  the  cares  of  public  life  grew 
less  onerous,  habits  of  self-indulgence  appear  to  have 
grown  upon  Maecenas.  It  will  probably  be  well,  how- 
ever, to  accept  with  some  reserve  what  has  been  said 
against  him  on  this  head.     Then,  as  now,  men  of  rank 


MjECEXAS.  43 

and  power  were  the  victims  of  calumnious  gossips  and 
slanderous  pamphleteers.  His  health  became  precari- 
ous. Incessant  sleeplessness  spoke  of  an  overtasked 
brain  and  shattered  nerves.  Life  was  full  of  pain ; 
etill  he  clung  to  it  with  a  craven-like  tenacity.  So, 
at  least,  Seneca  asserts,  quoting  in  support  of  his  state- 
ment some  very  bad  verses  by  Maecenas,  which  may 
be  thus  translated  : — 

"  Lame  in  feet,  and  lame  in  fingers, 
Crooked  in  back,  with  every  tooth 
Rattling  in  my  head,  yet,  'sooth, 

I'm  content,  so  life  but  lingers. 

Gnaw  my  withers,  rack  my  bones, 

Life,  mere  life,  for  all  atones." 

In  one  view  these  lines  ma}'-  certainly  be  construed  to 
import  the  same  sentiment  as  the  speech  of  the  miser- 
able Claudio  in  "  Measure  for  Measure," — 

w  The  weariest  and  most  loathed  worldly  life 
That  age,  ache,  penury,  and  imprisonment 
Can  lay  on  nature,  is  a  paradise 
To  what  we  fear  of  death." 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  they  may  quite  as  fairly  be 
regarded  as  merely  giving  expression  to  the  tenet  of 
the  Epicurean  philosophy,  that  however  much  we  may 
suffer  from  physical  pain  or  inconvenience,  it  is  still 
possible  to  be  happy.  "  We  know  what  we  are  ;  we 
know  not  what  we  may  be  !" 

Not  the  least  misfortune  of  Maecenas  was  his  marriage 
to  a  woman  whom  he  could  neither  live  with  nor  with- 
out— separating  irom  and  returning  to  her  so  often,  that, 


44  HORACE. 

according  to  Seneca,  he  was  a  thousand  times  married, 
yet  never  bad  but  one  wife.  Friends  he  had  many, 
loyal  and  devoted  friends,  on  whose  society  and  sym 
pathy  he  leant  more  and  more  as  the  years  wore  on* 
He  rarely  stirred  from  Rome,  loving  its  smoke,  its 
thronged  and  noisy  streets,  its  whirl  of  human  pas- 
sions, as  Johnson  loved  Fleet  Street,  or  "  the  sweet 
shady  side  of  Pall  Mall,"  better  than  all  the  verdure 
of  Tivoli,  or  the  soft  airs  and  exquisite  scenery  of  Baise 
He  liked  to  read  of  these  things,  however;  and  may 
have  found  as  keen  a  pleasure  in  the  scenery  of  the 
'  Georgics,'  or  in  Horace's  little  landscape-pictures,  as 
most  men  could  have  extracted  from  the  scenes  which 
they  describe. 

Such  was  the  man,  ushered  into  wdiose  nresence, 
Horace,  the  reckless  lampooner  and  satirist,  found 
himself  embarrassed,  and  at  a  loss  for  words.  Horace 
was  not  of  the  MacSycophant class,  who  cannot  "keep 
their  back  straight  in  the  presence  of  a  great  man  :  " 
nor  do  we  think  he  had  much  of  the  nervous  appre- 
hensiveness  of  the  poetic  temperament.  Why,  then, 
should  he  have  felt  thus  abashed  1  Partly,  it  may 
have  been,  from  natural  diffidence  at  encountering 
a  man  to  gain  whose  goodwill  was  a  matter  of  no 
small  importance,  but  whose  goodwill,  he  also  knew 
by  report,  was  not  easily  won  ;  and  partly,  to  find 
himself  face  to  face  with  one  so  conspicuously  identi- 
fied  with  the  cause  against  which  he  had  fought,  and 
the  men  whom  he  had  hitherto  had  every  reason  to 
detest. 

Once  admitted  by  Maecenas  to  the  inner  circle  of 


GOES   WITH  MAECENAS  TO  BRUNDUSIUM.       45 

his  friends,  Horace  made  liis  way  there  rapidly.  Thus 
we  find  him,  a  few  months  afterwards,  in  the  spring 
of  B.C.  37,  going  to  Brundusium  with  Maecenas,  who 
had  been  despatched  thither  on  a  mission  of  great 
public  importance  (Satires,  I.  G).  The  first  term  of 
the  triumvirate  of  Antony,  Octavius,  and  Lepidus 
had  expired  at  the  close  of  the  previous  year.  No 
fresh  arrangement  had  been  made,  and  Antony,  alarmed 
at  the  growing  power  of  Octavius  in  Italy,  had  ap- 
peared off  Brundusium  with  a  fleet  of  300  sail  and  a 
strong  body  of  troops.  The  Brundusians — on  a  hint, 
probably,  from  Octavius — forbade  his  landing,  and 
he  had  to  go  on  to  Tarentum,  where  terms  were 
ultimately  arranged  for  a  renewal  of  the  triumvirate. 
The  moment  was  a  critical  one,  for  an  open  rupture 
between  Octavius  and  Antony  was  imminent,  which 
might  wrell  have  proved  disastrous  to  the  former,  had 
Antony  joined  his  fleet  to  that  of  the  younger  Pom- 
pey,  which,  without  his  aid,  had  already  proved  more 
than  a  match  for  the  naval  force  of  Octavius. 

To  judge  by  Horace's  narrative,  all  the  friends  who 
accompanied  Maecenas  on  this  occasion,  except  his  co- 
adjutor, Cocceius  JServa,  who  had  three  years  before 
been  engaged  with  him  on  a  similar  mission  to  Brun- 
dusium, were  men  wdiose  thoughts  were  given  more  to 
literature  than  to  politics.  Horace  starts  from  Borne 
with  Heliodorus,  a  celebrated  rhetorician,  and  they 
make  their  way  very  leisurely  to  Anxur  (Terracina), 
where  they  are  overtaken  by  Maecenas. 

"Twas  fixed  that  we  should  meet  with  dear 
Maecenas  and  Cocceius  here, 


46  HORACE. 

Who  were  upon  a  mission  bound, 

Of  consequence  the  most  profound  ; 

For  who  so  skilled  the  feuds  to  close 

Of  those,  once  friends,  who  now  were  foes  ? " 

This  is  the  only  allusion  throughout  the  poem  to  tr.e 
object  of  the  journey.  The  previous  day,  Horace  had 
been  baulked  of  his  dinner,  the  water  being  so  bad. 
and  his  stomach  so  delicate,  that  he  chose  to  fast  rather 
than  run  the  risk  of  making  himself  ill  with  it.  And 
now  at  Terracina  he  found  his  eyes,  which  were  weak, 
so  troublesome,  that  he  had  to  dose  them  well  with 
a  black  wash.  These  are  the  first  indications  we  get 
of  habitual  delicacy  of  health,  which,  if  not  due 
altogether  to  the  fatigues  and  exposure  of  his  cam- 
paign with  Brutus,  had  probably  been  increased  by 
them. 

u  Meanwhile  beloved  Maecenas  came, 
Cocceius  too,  and  brought  with  them 
Fonteius  Capito,  a  man 
Endowed  with  every  grace  that  can 
A  perfect  gentleman  attend, 
And  Antony's  especial  friend." 

They  push  on  next  day  to  Formise,  and  are  amused 
at  Fundi  (Fondi)  on  the  way  by  the  consequential 
airs  of  the  prefect  of  the  place.  It  would  seem  as  if 
\he  peacock  nature  must  break  out  the  moment  a  man 
becomes  a  prefect  or  a  mayor. 

"  There  having  rested  for  the  night, 
With  inexpressible  delight 
We  hail  the  dawn,, — for  we  that  day 
At  Sinuessa,  on  our  way 


THE  BRUNDUSIAN  JOURNEY.  47 

"With  Plotius,*  Virgil,  Varius  too, 
Have  an  appointed  rendezvous  ; 
Souls  all,  than  whom  the  earth  ne'er  saw 
More  noble,  more  exempt  from  flaw, 
Nor  are  there  any  on  its  round 
To  whom  I  am  more  firmly  hound. 
Oh  !  what  embracings,  and  what  mirth  ! 
Nothing,  no,  nothing,  on  this  earth, 
"Whilst  I  have  reason,  shall  I  e'er 
With  a  true  genial  friend  compare  !  " 

Next  day  they  reach  Capua,  where,  so  soon  as  thei* 
mules  are  unpacked,  away 

"  Maecenas  hies,  at  ball  to  play  ; 
To  sleep  myself  and  Virgil  go, 
For  tennis-practice  is,  we  know, 
Injurious,  quite  beyond  all  question, 
Both  to  weak  eyes  and  weak  digestion." 

With  these  and  suchlike  details  Horace  carries  us 
pleasantly  on  with  his  party  to  Brundusium.  They 
were  manifestly  in  no  hurry,  for  they  took  fourteen 
days,  according  to  Gibbon's  careful  estimate,  to  travel 
378  Eoman  miles.  That  they  might  have  got  over  the 
ground  much  faster,  if  necessary,  is  certain  from  what 
is  known  of  other  journeys.  Caesar  posted  100  miles 
a-day.  Tiberius  travelled  200  miles  in  twenty-four 
hours,  when  he  was  hastening  to  close  the  eyes  of 
his  brother  Drusus  ;  and  Statins  (Sylv.  14,  Carm. 
3)  talks  of  a  man  leaving  Rome  in  the  morning,  and 
being  at  Baioe  or  Puteoli,  127  miles  off,  before  night. 

*  Plotius  Tucca,  himself  a  poet,  and  associated  by  Virgil  with 
Varius  in  editing  the  /Eneid  after  the  poet's  death. 


50  BORA  CE. 

The  cursed  gnats  were  so  provoking, 
The  bull-frogs  set  up  such  a  croaking. 
A  bargeman,  too,  a  drunken  lout, 
And  passenger,  sang  turn  about, 
In  tones  remarkable  for  strength, 
Their  absent  sweethearts,  till  at  length 
The  passenger  began  to  doze, 
When  up  the  stalwart  bargeman  rose, 
His  fastenings  from  the  stone  unwound, 
And  left  the  mule  to  graze  around  ; 
Then  down  upon  his  back  he  lay, 
And  snored  in  a  terrific  way." 

Neither  is  the  following  allusion  to  the  Jews  and 
their  creed  without  its  value,  especially  wdien  followed, 
as  it  is,  by  Horace's  avowal,  almost  in  the  words  of  Lu- 
cretius (B.  VI.  56),  of  what  was  then  his  own.  Later 
in  life  he  came  to  a  very  different  conclusion.  When 
the  travellers  reach  Egnatia,  their  ridicule  is  excited 
by  being  shown  or  told,  it  is  not  very  clear  which, 
of  incense  kindled  in  the  temple  there  miraculously 
without  the  application  of  fire. 

"  This  may  your  circumcised  Jew 
Believe,  but  never  I.     For  true 
I  hold  it  that  the  Deities 
Enjoy  themselves  in  careless  ease  ;  * 
Nor  think,  when  Nature,  spurning  Law, 
Does  something  which  inspires  our  awe, 
'Tis  sent  by  the  offended  gods 
Direct  from  their  august  abodes." 

*  So  Tennyson,  in  his  "  Lotus- Eaters  :  " — 

"  Let  us  swear  an  oath,  and  keep  it  with  an  equal  mind, 
In  the  hollow  Lotus-land  to  live  and  lie  reclined 
On  the  hills  like  gods  together,  careless  of  mankind." 
See  the  whole  of  the  passage. 


EIS  INTIMACY    WITH  MAECENAS.  51 

Had  Horace  known  anything  of  natural  science,  he 
might  not  have  gone  so  far  to  seek  for  the  explanation 
of  the  seeming  miracle. 

Gibbon  speaks  contemptuously  of  many  of  the  in 
cidents  recorded  in  this  poem,  asking,  "  How  could  a 
man  of  taste  reflect  on  them  the  day  after1?"  But  the 
poem  has  much  more  than  a  merely  literary  interest ; 
thanks  to  such  passages  as  these,  and  to  the  charming 
tribute  by  Horace  to  his  friends  previously  cited. 

Kothing   can  better  illustrate   the  footing  of   easy 
friendship    on    which  he    soon    came    to    stand   with 
Maecenas  than  the  following  poem,  which  must  have 
been  written  before  the  year  B.C.  32  ;  for  in  that  yea- 
Terentia  became  the   mistress  of  the  great  palace  01 
the  Esquiline,   and  the  allusion  in  the  last  verse  L 
much   too    familiar   to  have  been  intended   for  her. 
Horace,  whose  delicacy  of  stomach  wTas  probably  noto- 
rious,  had  apparently  been  the  victim  of  a  practical 
joke — a  species  of  rough  fun  to  which  the  Romans  ot 
the   upper  classes   appear  to   have   been   particularly 
prone.     It  is  difficult  otherwise  to  understand  how  he 
could  have  stumbled  at  Maecenas's  table  on  a  dish  so 
overdosed  with  garlic    as  that  which  provoked    this 
humorous    protest.       From   what    we    know    of    the 
abominations  of  an  ordinary  Roman  banquet,  the  vege- 
table stew  in  this  instance  must  have  reached  a  climax 
of  unusual  atrocity. 

"  If  his  old  father's  throat  any  impious  sinner 
Has  cut  with  unnatural  hand  to  the  bone, 
Give  him  garlic,  more  noxious  than  hemlock,  at  dinner. 
Ye  gods  !  the  strong  stomachs  that  reapers  must  own  ' 


52  1I0RA  CE. 

"  With  what  poison  is  this  that  my  vitals  are  heated  ? 
By  viper's  blood— oertes,  it  cannot  be  less — 
Stewed  into  the  potherbs ;  can  I  have  been  cheated  ? 
Or  Canidia,  did  she  cook  the  villanous  mess  1 

'When  Medea  was  struck  by  the  handsome  sea-rover, 

"Who  in  beauty  outshone  all  his  Argonaut  band, 
This  mixture  she  took  to  lard  Jason  all  over, 

And  so  tamed  the  lire-breathing  bulls  to  his  hand. 

"  With  this  her  fell  presents  she  dyed  and  infected, 
On  his  innocent  leman  avenging  the  slight 
Of  her  terrible  beauty,  forsaken,  neglected, 

And  then  on  her  car,  dragon-wafted,  took  flight. 

"Never  star  on  Apulia,  the  thirsty  and  arid, 
Exhaled  a  more  baleful  or  pestilent  dew, 
And  the  gift,  which  invincible  Hercules  carried, 

Burned  not  to  his  bones  more  remorselessly  through. 

"  Should  you  e'er  long  again  for  such  relish  as  this  is, 
Devoutly  I'll  pray,  wag  Maecenas,  I  vow, 
With  her  hand  that  your  mistress  arrest  all  your  kisses, 
And  lie  as  far  off  as  the  couch  will  allow." 

It  is  startling  to  our  notions  to  find  so  direct  a 
reference  as  that  in  the  last  verse  to  the  "  rehniin^ 
favourite "  of  Maecenas ;  but  what  are  we  to  think 
of  the  following  lines,  which  point  unequivocally  to 
Maecenas's  wife,  in  the  following  Ode  addressed  to  her 
husband  (Odes,  II.  12)? 

"  Would  you,  friend,  for  Phrygia's  hoarded  gold, 
Or  all  that  Achaemenes'  self  possesses, 
Or  e'en  for  what  Araby's  coffers  hold, 
Barter  one  lock  of  her  clustering  tresses, 


HIS  INTIMACY    WITH  MAECENAS.  53 

While  she  stoops  her  throat  to  your  burning  kiss, 
Or,  fondly  cruel,  the  bliss  denies  you, 

She  would  have  you  snatch,  or  will,  snatching  this 
Herself,  with  a  sweeter  thrill  surprise  you  1 " 

If  Maecenas  allowed  his  friends  to  write  of  his  wifo 
in  this  strain,  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  if  that 
coquettish  and  capricious  lady  gave,  as  she  did,  "  that 
worthy  man  good  grounds  for  uneasiness." 


CHAPTER    IV. 

PUBLICATION    OF    FIRST   BOOK   OF    SATIRES. — HIS    FRIENDS.-- 
RECEIVES   THE    SABINE   FARM    FROM    MAECENAS. 

In  B.C.  34,  Horace  published  the  First  Book  of  his 
Satires,  and  placed  in  front  of.  it  one  specially 
addressed  to  Maecenas — a  course  which  he  adopted  in 
each  successive  section  of  his  poems,  apparently  to 
mark  his  sense  of  obligation  to  him  as  the  most  hon- 
oured of  his  friends.  The  name  Satires  does  not 
truly  indicate-  the  name  of  this  series.  They  are 
rather  didactic  poems,  couched  in  a  more  or  less 
dramatic  form,  and  carried  on  in  an  easy  conversational 
tone,  without  for  the  most  part  any  definite  purpose, 
often  diverging  into  such  collateral  topics  as  suggest 
themselves  by  the  way,  with  all  the  ease  and  buoyancy 
of  agreeable  talk,  and  getting  back  or  not,  as  it  may 
happen,  into  the  main  line  of  idea  with  which  they 
set  out.  Some  of  them  are  conceived  in  a  vein  of 
fine  irony  throughout.  Others,  like  "The  Journey  to 
Brundusium,"  are  mere  narratives,  relieved  by  humor- 
ous illustrations.  ]>ut  we  do  not  find  in  them  the 
epigrammatic  force,  the  sternness  of  moral  rebuke,  or 
the  scathing  spirit  of  sarcasm,   which  are  commonly 


BOW  BE    WROTE  SATIRE.  55 

associated  with  the  idea  of  satire.  Literary  display 
appears  never  to  be  aimed  at.  The  plainest  phrases, 
the  homeliest  illustrations,  the  most  everyday  topics — 
if  they  come  in  the  way — are  made  use  of  for  the  pur- 
pose of  insinuating  or  enforcing  some  useful  truth. 
Point  and  epigram  are  the  last  things  thought  of; 
and  therefore  it  is  that  Pope's  translations,  admirable 
as  in  themselves  they  are,  fail  to  give  an  idea  of  the 
lightness  of  touch,  the  shifting  lights  and  shades,  the 
carelessness  alternating  with  force,  the  artless  natural 
manner,  which  distinguish  these  charming  essays. 
"  The  terseness  of  Horace's  language  in  his  Satires," 
it  has  been  well  said,  "  is  that  of  a  proverb,  neat 
because  homely  •  while  the  terseness  of  Pope  is  that 
of  an  epigram,  which  will  only  become  homely  in 
time,  because  it  is  neat." 

In  writing  these  Satires,  which  he  calls  merely 
rhythmical  prose,  Horace  disclaims  for  himself  the 
title  of  poet ;  and  at  this  time  it  would  appear  as  if 
he  had  not  even  conceived  the  idea  of  "  modulating 
JEolic  song  to  the  Italian  lyre,"  on  which  he  sub- 
sequently rested  his  hopes  of  posthumous  fame. 
The  very  words  of  his  disclaimer,  however,  show 
how  well  he  appreciated  the  poet's  gifts  (Satires,  I. 
4):- 

"  First  from  the   roll  I   strike  myself  of  those  I  poets 

call, 
For  merely  to  compose  in  verse  is  not  the  all-in-all  : 
Nor  if  a  man  shall  write,  like  me,  things  nigh  to  prose 

akin, 
Sh  ill  he,  however  well  he  write,  the  name  of  poet  win  ? 


56  IIORA  CE. 

To  genius,  to  the  man  whose  soul  is  touched  with  fire 

divine, 
Whose  voice  speaks  like  a  trumpet-note,  that  honoured 

name  assign. 
'Tis  not  enough  that  you  compose  your 

verse 
In  diction  irreproachable,  pure,  scholarly,  and  terse, 
Which,  dislocate  its  cadence,  by  anybody  may 
Be  spoken  like  the  language  of  the  father  in  the  play. 
Divest  those  things  which  now  I  write,  and  Lucilius  wrote 

of  yore, 
Of  certain  measured  cadences,  by  setting  that  before 
Which  was  behind,  and  that  before  which  I  had  placed 

behind, 
Yet  by  no  alchemy  will  you  in  the  residuum  find 
The  members  still  apparent  of  the  dislocated  bard," — 


a  result  which  he  contends  would  not  ensue,  however 
much  you  might  disarrange  the  language  of  a  passage 
of  true  poetry,  such  as  one  he  quotes  from  Ennius, 
the  poetic  charm  of  which,  by  the  way,  is  not  very 
apparent.  Schooled,  however,  as  he  had  been,  in  the 
pure  literature  of  Greece,  Horace  aimed  at  a  concise- 
ness and  purity  of  style  which  had  been  hitherto 
unknown  in  Roman  satire,  and  studied,  not  unsuccess- 
fully, to  give  to  his  own  work,  by  great  and  wrell- 
disguised  elaboration  of  finish,  the  concentrated 
force  and  picturesque  precision  which  are  large 
elements  in  all  genuine  poetry.  His  own  practice, 
as  we  see  from  its  results,  is  given  in  the  following 
lines,  and  a  better  description  of  how  didactic  or 
satiric  poetry  should  \m  writtou  could  s^axcelj  be 
desired  (Satires,  I.  10). 


CALVUS  AND   CATULLUS.  57 

u  'Tis  not  enough,  a  poet's  fame  to  make, 
That  you  with  bursts  of  mirth  your  audience  shake  j 
And  yet  to  this,  as  all  experience  shows, 
No  small  amount  of  skill  and  talent  goes. 
Your  style  must  be  concise,  that  what  you  say 
May  flow  on  clear  and  smooth,  nor  lose  its  way, 
Stumbling  and  halting  through  a  chaos  drear 
Of  cumbrous  words,  that  load  the  weary  ear  ; 
And  you  must  pass  from  grave  to  gay, — now,  like 
The  rhetorician,  vehemently  strike, 
Now,  like  the  poet,  deal  a  lighter  hit 
With  easy  playfulness  and  polished  wit, — 
Veil  the  stern  vigour  of  a  soul  rot  ust, 
And  flash  your  fancies,  while  like  death  you  thrust ; 
For  men  are  more  impervious,  as  a  rule, 
To  slashing  censure  than  to  ridicule. 
Here  lay  the  merit  of  those  writers,  who 
In  the  Old  Comedy  our  fathers  drew  ; 
Here  should  we  struggle  in  their  steps  to  tread 
Whom  fop  Hermogenes  has  never  read, 
Nor  that  mere  ape  of  his,  who  all  day  long 
Makes  Calvus  and  Catullus  all  his  song." 

The  concluding  hit  at  Hermogenes  Tigellius  and 
his  double  is  very  characteristic  of  Horace's  manner. 
When  he  has  worked  up  his  description  of  a  vice  to  be 
avoided  or  a  virtue  to  be  pursued,  he  generally  drives 
home  his  lesson  by  the  mention  of  some  well-known 
person's  name,  thus  importing  into  his  literary  prac- 
tice the  method  taken  by  his  father,  as  we  have  seen, 
to  impress  his  ethical  teachings  upon  himself  in  his 
youth.  The  allusion  to  Calvus  and  Catullus,  the  only  one 
anywhere  made  to  these  poets  by  Horace,  is  curious;  but 
it  would  be  wrong  to  infer  from  it,  that  Horace  meant  to 
disparage  these  fine  poets.     Calvus  had  a  great  r^puta- 


58  HORACE. 

tion  both  as  an  orator  and  poet.  But,  except  some 
insignificant  fragments,  nothing  of  what  he  wrote  is 
left.  How  Catullus  wrote  we  do,  however,  know  ;  and 
although  it  is  conceivable  that  Horace  had  no  great 
sympathy  with  some  of  his  love  verses,  which  were 
probably  of  too  sentimental  a  strain  for  his  taste,  we 
may  be  sure  that  he  admired  the  brilliant  genius  as 
well  as  the  fine  workmanship  of  many  of  his  other 
poems.  At  all  events,  he  had  too  much  good  sense  to 
launch  a  sneer  at  so  great  a  poet  recently  dead,  which 
would  not  only  have  been  in  the  worst  taste,  but 
might  justly  have  been  ascribed  to  jealousy.  When 
he  talks,  therefore,  of  a  pair  of  fribbles  who  can  sing 
nothing  but  Calvus  and  Catullus,  it  is,  as  Macleane  has 
said  in  his  note  on  the  passage,  "  as  if  a  man  were  to 
say  of  a  modern  English  coxcomb,  that  he  could  sing 
Moore's  ballads  from  beginning  to  end,  but  could 
not  understand  a  line  of  Shakespeare," — no  dis- 
paragement to  Moore,  whatever  it  might  be  to  the 
vocalist.  Hermogenes  and  his  ape  (whom  Ave  may 
identify  with  one  Demetrius,  who  is  subsequently 
coupled  with  him  in  the  same  satire)  were  musicians 
and  vocalists,  idolised,  after  the  manner  of  modern 
Italian  singers,  by  the  young  misses  of  Rome.  Pam- 
pered favourites  of  fashion,  the  Farinellis  of  the  hour, 
their  opinion  on  all  matters  of  taste  was  sure  to  be  as 
freely  given  as  it  was  worthless.  The}r  had  been, 
moreover,  so  indiscreet  as  to  provoke  Horace's  sarcasm 
by  running  down  his  verses.  Leave  criticism,  he  re- 
joins, to  men  who  have  a  right  to  judge.  Stick  to  your 
proper  vocation,  and 


HIS  POET  FRIEXDS.  59 

"To  puling  girls,  that  listen  and  adore, 
Your  love-lorn  chants  and  woful  wailings  pour  !" 

In  the  same  Satire  we  have  proof  how  warmly  Horace 
thought  and  spoke  of  living  poets.     Thus  : — 

"  In  grave  Iambic  measures  Pollio  sings 
For  our  delight  the  deeds  of  mighty  kings. 
The  stately  Epic  Varius  leads  along, 
And  where  is  voice  so  resonant,  so  strong  ? 
The  Muses  of  the  woods  and  plains  have  shed 
Their  every  grace  and  charm  on  Virgil's  head." 

"With  none  of  those  will  he  compete.  Satire  is  his 
element,  and  there  he  proclaims  himself  to  he  an 
humble  follower  of  his  great  predecessor.  But  while 
he  bows  to  Lucilius  as  his  master,  and  owns  him  supe- 
rior in  polish  and  scholarly  grace  to  the  satirists  who 
preceded  him,  still,  he  continues — 

"  Still,  were  he  living  now — had  only  such 
Been  Fate's  decree — he  would  have  blotted  much, 
Cut  everything  away  that  could  be  called 
Crude  or  superfluous,  or  tame,  or  bald  ; 
Oft  scratched  his  head,  the  labouring  poet's  trick, 
And  bitten  all  his  nails  down  to  the  quick." 

And  then  he  lays  down  the  canon  for  all  high-class 
composition,  which  can  never  be  too  often  enforced  : — 

"  Oh  yes,  believe  me,  you  must  draw  your  pen 
Not  once  or  twice,  but  o'er  and  o'er  again, 
Through  what  you've  written,  if  vou  would  entice 
The  man  who  reads  you  once  to  read  you  twice, 
Not  making  popular  applause  your  cue, 
But  looking  to  find  audience  fit  though  few.     (C.) 

He  had  himself  followed  the  rule,  and  found  the 
reward.     "With  natural  exultation  he  appeals  against 


60  HORACE. 

the  judgment  of  men  of  the  Hermogenes  type  to  an 
array  of  critics  of  whose  good  opinion  he  might  well 
he  proud  : — 

"  Maecenas,  Virgil,  Varius, — if  I  please 
In  my  poor  writings  these  and  such  as  these, — 
If  Plotius,  Valgius,  Fuscus  will  commend, 
And  good  Octavius,  I've  achieved  my  end. 
You,  nohle  Pollio  (let  your  friend  disclaim 
All  thoughts  of  flattery,  when  he  names  your  name), 
Messala  and  his  brother,  Servius  too, 
And  Bihulus,  and  Furnius  kind  and  true, 
With  others,  whom,  despite  their  sense  and  wit, 
And  friendly  hearts,  I  purposely  omit ; 
Such  I  would  have  my  critics  ;  men  to  gain 
Whose  smiles  were  pleasure,  to  forget  them  pain."     (C.) 

It  is  not  strange  that  Horace,  even  in  these  early 
days,  numbered  so  many  distinguished  men  among  his 
friends,  for,  the  question  of  genius  apart,  there  must 
have  been  something  particularly  engaging  in  his 
kindly  and  affectionate  nature.  He  was  a  good  hater, 
as  all  warmdiearted  men  are;  and  when  his  blood  was 
up,  he  could,  like  Diggory,  "remember  his  swashing 
blow."  He  would  fain,  as  he  says  himself  (Satires,  II. 
1 ),  be  at  peace  with  all  men  : — 

"  But  he  who  shall  my  temper  try — 
'Twere  best  to  touch  me  not,  say  I — 
Shall  rue  it,  and  through  all  the  town 
My  verse  shall  damn  him  with  renown ." 

But  with  his  friends  he  was  forbearing,  devoted, 
lenient  to  their  foibles,  not  boring  them  with  his  own, 
liberal  in  construing  their  motives,  and  as  trustful  in 
their  loyalty  to  himself  as  he  was  assured  of  his  owd 


HIS  LOYALTY  TO  FRIENDS.  61 

to  them  ;  clearly  a  man  to  be  loved — a  man  pleasant 
to  meet  and  pleasant  to  remember,  constant,  and  to  be 
relied  on  in  sunshine  or  in  gloom.  Friendship  with  him 
was  not  a  thing  to  be  given  by  halves.  He  could  see 
a  friend's  faults — no  man  quicker — but  it  did  not  lie 
in  his  mouth  to  babble  about  them.  He  was  not  one 
of  those  who  "whisper  faults  and  hesitate  dislikes." 
Love  me,  love  my  friend,  was  his  rule.  Neither  would 
he  sit  quietly  by,  while  his  friends  were  being  dis- 
paraged. And  if  he  has  occasion  himself  to  rally  their 
foibles  in  his  poems,  he  does  so  openly,  and  does  it 
with  such  an  implied  sympathy  and  avowal  of  kindred 
weakness  in  himself,  that  offence  was  impossible. 
Above  all,  he  possessed  in  perfection  what  Mr  Disraeli 
happily  calls  "  the  rare  gift  of  raillery,  which  natters 
the  self-love  of  those  whom  it  seems  not  to  spare." 
These  characteristics  are  admirably  indicated  by 
Persius  (I.  116)  in  speaking  of  his  Satires  — 

"  Arch  Horace,  while  he  strove  to  mend, 
Probed  all  the  foibles  of  his  smiling  friend  ; 
Played  lightly  round  and  round  each  peccant  part, 
And  won,  unfelt,  an  entrance  to  his  heart."     (Gifford.) 

And  we  may  be  sure  the  same  qualities  were  even 
more  conspicuous  in  his  personal  intercourse  with  his 
friends.  Satirist  though  he  was,  he  is  continuallv  in- 
culcating  the  duty  of  charitable  judgments  towards  all 
men. 

"  What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 
But  know  not  what's  resisted," 

is  a  thought  often  suggested  by  his  works.  The  best 
need  large  grains  of  allowance,  and  to  whom  should 


62  HORA  CE. 

these  be  given  if  not  to  friends  1     Here  is  his  creed  on 
this  subject  (Satires,  I.  3)  : — 

"  True  love,  we  know,  is  blind  ;  defects,  that  blight 
The  loved  one's  charms,  escape  the  lover's  sight, 
Nay,  pass  for  beauties  ;  as  Balbinus  shows 
A  passion  for  the  wen  on  Agna's  nose. 
Oh,  with  our  friendships  that  we  did  the  same, 
And  screened  our  blindness  under  virtue's  name  ! 
For  we  are  bound  to  treat  a  friend's  defect 
With  touch  most  tender,  and  a  fond  respect ; 
Even  as  a  father  treats  a  child's,  who  hints, 
The  urchin's  eyes  are  roguish,  if  lie  squints  : 
Or  if  he  be  as  stunted,  short,  and  thick, 
As  Sisyphus  the  dwarf,  will  call  him  l  chick  ! ' 
If  crooked  all  ways,  in  back,  in  legs,  and  thighs, 
With  softening  phrases  will  the  flaw  disguise. 
So,  if  one  friend  too  close  a  fist  betrays, 
Let  us  ascribe  it  to  his  frugal  ways  ; 
Or  is  another — such  we  often  find — 
To  flippant  jest  and  braggart  talk  inclined, 
'Tis  only  from  a  kindly  wash  to  try 
To  make  the  time  'mongst  friends  go  lightly  by  ; 
Another's  tongue  is  rough  and  over-free, 
Let's  call  it  bluntness  and  sincerity  ; 
Another's  choleric  ;  him  we  must  screen, 
As  cursed  with  feelings  for  his  peace  too  keen. 
This  is  the  course,  methinks,  that  makes  a  friend, 
And,  having  made,  secures  him  to  the  end." 

AVhat  wonder,  such  being  bis  practice — for  Horace  in 
this  as  in  other  things  acted  up  to  his  professions — 
that  lie  was  so  dear,  as  we  see  he  was,  to  so  many  of 
the  best  men  of  his  time'?  The  very  contrast  which 
his  life  presented  to  that  of  most  of  his  associates  must 
have  helped  to  attract  them  to  him.     Most  of  them 


POOR  AND   CONTENT,   IS  RICH.  G3 

were  absorbed  in  either  political  or  military  pursuits* 
Wealth,  power,  dignity,  the  splendid  prizes  of  ambition, 
were  the  dream  of  their  lives.     And  even  those  whose 
tastes  inclined  mainly  towards  literature  and  art  were 
not  exempt  from  the  prevailing  passion  for  riches  and 
display.     Rich,  they  were  eager  to  be  more  rich  ;  well 
placed  in  society,  they  were   covetous   of  higher  social 
distinction.    Now  at  Rome,  gay,  luxurious,  dissipated  ; 
anon  in   Spain,   Parthia,    Syria,   Africa,   or  wherever 
duty,  interest,  or  pleasure   called  them,    encountering 
perils  by  land  and  sea  with  reckless  indifference   to 
fatigue  and   danger,    always   with   a   hunger   at   their 
hearts  for  something,   which,  when  found,  did  not  ap- 
pease it;  they  must  have  felt  a  peculiar  interest  in  a 
man  who,  without  apparent  effort,   seemed   to  get  so 
much   more  out  of  life  than   they   were   able   to  do, 
with  all  their  struggles,   and  all  their  much  larger  ap- 
parent means  of  enjoyment.      They   must   have  seen 
that  wealth   and  honour  were  both  within  his 'grasp, 
and  they  must   have   known,  too,    that  it  was  from  no 
lack  of  appreciation  of  either  that  he  deliberately  de- 
clined to  seek  them.      Wealth  would  have  purchased 
for  him  many  a  refined  pleasure  which  he  could  heartily 
appreciate,  and  honours  might  have  saved  him  from 
some  of  the  social  slights  which  must  have  tested  hi& 
philosophy.     But  he  told  them,  in  every  variety  of 
phrase  and  illustration — in  ode,  in  satire,  and  epistle— 
that  without  self-control  and  temperance  in  all  things 
there  would  be  no  joy  without  remorse,   no  pleasure 
without  fatigue — that  it  is  from  within  that  happiness 
must  come,  if  it  come  at  all,  and  that  unless  the  mind 


64  HORACE. 

has  schooled  itself  to  peace  by  the  renunciation  oi 
covetous  desires, 

"We  may  he  wise,  or  rich,  or  great, 
But  never  can  he  hi  est." 

And  as  he  spoke,  so  they  must  have  seen  he  lived. 
Wealth  and  honours  would  manifestly  have  been 
bought  too  dearly  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  tranquillity 
and  independence  which  he  early  set  before  him  as 
the  objects  of  his  life. 

"  The  content,  surpassing  wealth, 
The  sage  in  meditation  found  ; " 

the  content  which  springs  from  living  in  consonance 
with  the  dictates  of  nature,  from  healthful  pursuits, 
from  a  conscience  void  of  offence  ;  the  content  which 
is  incompatible  with  the  gnawing  disquietudes  of  ava- 
rice, of  ambition,  of  social  envy, — with  that  in  his 
heart,  he  knew  he  could  be  true  to  his  genius,  and 
make  life  worth  living  for.  A  man  of  this  character 
must  always  be  rare  ;  least  of  all  was  he  likely  to  be 
common  in  Horace's  day,  when  the  men  in  whose 
circle  he  was  moving  were  engaged  in  the  great  task  of 
crushing  the  civil  strife  which  had  shaken  the  stability 
of  the  Roman  power,  and  of  consolidating  an  empire 
greater  and  more  powerful  than  her  greatest  states- 
men had  previously  dreamed  of.  But  all  the  more 
delightful  to  these  men  must  it  have  been  to  come 
into  intimate  contact  with  a  man  who,  while  perfectly 
appreciating  their  special  gifts  and  aims,  could  bring 
them  back  from  the  stir  and  excitement  of  their  habitual 
life  to  think  of  other  things  than  social  or  political 


POOR  AND  CONTENT,   IS  RICH.  65 

successes, — to  look  into  their  own  hearts,  and  to  live 
for  a  time  for  something  better  and  more  enduring 
than  the  triumphs  of  vanity  or  ambition. 

Horace  from  the  first  seems  to  have  wisely  deter- 
mined to  keep  himself  free  from  those  shackles  which 
most  men  are  so  eager  to  forge  for  themselves,  by 
setting  their  heart  on  wealth  and  social  distinction. 
With  perfect  sincerity  he  had  told  Maecenas,  as  we 
have  seen,  that  he  coveted  neither,  and  he  gives  his 
reasons  thus  (Satires,  I.  6)  : — 

"  For  then  a  larger  income  must  he  made, 
Men's  favour  courted,  and  their  whims  obeyed  ; 
Nor  could  I  then  indulge  a  lonely  mood, 
Away  from  town,  in  country  solitude, 
For  the  false  retinue  of  pseudo-friends, 
That  all  my  movements  servilely  attends. 
More  slaves  must  then  be  fed,  more  horses  too, 
And  chariots  bought.     Now  have  I  nought  to  do, 
If  I  would  even  to  Tarentum  ride, 
But  mount  my  bobtailed  mule,  my  wallets  tied 
Across  his  flanks,  which,  flapping  as  we  go, 
With  my  ungainly  ankles  to  and  fro, 
Work  his  unhappy  sides  a  world  of  weary  woe." 

"From  this  wise  resolution  he  never  swerved,  and  so 
through  life  he  maintained  an  attitude  of  independ- 
ence in  thought  and  action  which  would  otherwise 
have  been  impossible.  He  does  not  say  it  in  so  many 
words,  but  the  sentiment  meets  us  all  through  his 
pages,  which  Burns,  whose  mode  of  thinking  so  often 
reminds  us  of  Horace,  puts  into  the  line, 

"  My  freedom's  a  lairdship  nae  monarch  may  touch." 
A.  c.  vol.  vi.  E 


66  HORACE. 

And  we  shall  hereafter  have  occasion  to  see  that 
when  put  to  the  proof,  lie  acted  upon  this  creed. 
Well  might  the  overworked  statesman  have  envied  the 
poet  the  ease  and  freedom  of  his  life,  and  longed  to 
be  able  to  spend  a  day  as  Horace,  in  the  same  Satire, 
tells  us  his  days  were  passed ! — 

"  I  walk  alone,  by  mine  own  fancy  led, 
Inquire  the  price  of  potherbs  and  of  bread, 
The  circus  cross,  to  see  its  tricks  and  fun, 
The  forum,  too,  at  times,  near  set  of  sun  ; 
With  other  fools  there  do  I  stand  and  gape 
Round  fortune-tellers'  stalls,  thence  home  escape 
To  a  plain  meal  of  pancakes,  pulse,  and  pease  ; 
Three  young  boy-slaves  attend  on  me  with  these. 
Upon  a  slab  of  snow-white  marble  stand 
A  goblet  and  two  beakers  ;  near  at  hand, 
A  common  ewer,  patera,  and  bowl ; 
Campania's  potteries  produced  the  whole. 

To  sleep  then  I 

I  keep  my  couch  till  ten,  then  walk  awhile, 

Or  having  read  or  writ  what  may  beguile 

A  quiet  after-hour,  anoint  my  limbs 

With  oil,  not  such  as  filthy  Natta  skims 

From  lamps  defrauded  of  their  unctuous  fare. 

And  when  the  sunbeams,  grown  too  hot  to  bear, 

Warn  me  to  quit  the  field,  and  hand-ball  play, 

The  bath  takes  all  my  weariness  away. 

Then,  having  lightly  dined,  just  to  appease 

The  sense  of  emptiness,  I  take  mine  ease, 

Enjoying  all  home's  simple  luxury. 

This  is  the  life  of  bard  unclogged,  like  me, 

By  stern  ambition's  miserable  weight. 

So  placed,  I  own  with  gratitude,  my  state 

Is  sweeter,  ay,  than  though  a  quarter's  power 

From  sire  and  grandsire's  sires  had  been  my  dower" 


TEE  SABINE  FARM.  G7 

It  would  not  have  been  easy  to  bribe  a  man  ol 
these  simple  habits  and  tastes,  as  some  critics  have 
contended  that  Horace  was  bribed,  to  become  the 
laureate  of  a  party  to  which  he  had  once  been  opposed, 
even  had  Maecenas  wished  to  do  so.  His  very  indif- 
ference to  those  favours  which  were  within  the  dis- 
posal of  a  great  minister  of  state,  placed  him  on  a 
vantage-ground  in  his  relations  with  MaBcenas  which 
he  could  in  no  other  way  have  secured.  Nor,  we  may 
well  believe,  would  that  distinguished  man  have  wished 
it  otherwise.  Surrounded  as  he  was  by  servility  and 
selfish  baseness,  he  must  have  felt  himself  irresisti- 
bly drawn  towards  a  nature  so  respectful,  yet  perfectly 
manly  and  independent,  as  that  of  the  poet,  ^or  can 
we  doubt  that  intimacy  had  grown  into  friendship, 
warm  and  sincere,  before  he  gratified  his  own  feelings, 
while  he  made  Horace  happy  for  life,  by  presenting 
him  with  a  small  estate  in  the  Sabine  country — a  gift 
which,  we  may  be  sure,  he  knew  well  would  be  of  all 
gifts  the  most  welcome.  It  is  demonstrable  that  it 
was  not  given  earlier  than_RO_J[3i_.or  after  upwards 
of  four  years  of  intimate  acquaintance.  That  Horace 
had  longed  for  such  a  possession,  he  tells  us  himseli 
(Satires,  II.  6).  He  had  probably  expressed  his  long- 
ing in  the  hearing  of  his  friend,  and  to  such  a  friend 
the  opportunity  of  turning  the  poet's  dream  into  a 
reality  must  have  been  especially  delightful. 

The  gift  was  a  slight  one  for  Maecenas  to  bestow ; 
but,  with  Horace's  fondness  for  the  country,  it 
had  a  value  for  him  beyond  all  price.  It  gave 
him    a    competency  —  satis    stiperque  —  enough    and 


C8  HORACE. 

raore  than  he  wanted   for  his  needs.      It  gave  him 
leisure,  health,  amusement  j  and,  more  precious  than 
all,  it  secured  him  undisturbed  freedom   of  thought, 
and  opportunities  for  that  calm  intercourse  with  nature 
which  he  "  needed  for  his  spirit's  health."     ISTever  was 
gift  better  bestowed,  or  more  worthily  requited.     To 
it  we  are  indebted  for  much  of  that  poetry  which  has 
linked  the  name  of  Ma3cenas  with  that  of  the  poet  in 
associations  the  most  engaging,  and  has  afforded,  and 
will   afford,    ever-new   delight   to    successive  genera- 
tions.    The  Sabine  farm  was  situated  in  the  Valley  of 
Ustica,  thirty  miles  from  Eonie,  and  twelve  miles  from 
Tivoli.     It  possessed  the  attraction,  no  small  one  to 
Horace,  of  being  very  secluded — Varia  (Vico  Varo), 
the   nearest   town,   being  four   miles  off — yet,  at   the 
same  time,  within  an  easy  distance  of  Eome.     When 
his    spirits    wanted    the    stimulus    of   society    or    the 
bustle  of  the  capital,  which  they  often  did,  his  ambling 
mule  could  speedily  convey  him  thither  :  and  when 
jaded,  on  the  other  hand,   by  the  noise  and  racket 
and  dissipations  of  Eome,  he  could,  in  the  same  homely 
way,  bury  himself  within  a  few  hours  among  the  hills, 
and  there,  under  the  shadow  of  his  favourite  Lucre- 
tilis,  or  by  the  banks  of  the  clear-flowing  and  ice-cold 
Digentia,    either  stretch  himself  to   dream  upon  the 
grass,  lulled  by  the  murmurs  of  the  stream,  or  do  a 
little  farming  in  the  way  of  clearing  his  fields  of  stones, 
or  turning  over  a  furrow  here  and  there  with  the  hoe. 
There  was  a  rough  wildness  in  the  scenery  and  a  sharp- 
ness in  the  air,  both  of  which  Horace  liked,  although, 
as  years  advanced  and  his  health  grew  more  delicate, 


THE  SABINE  FARM  THEN  AND  NOW.         G& 

he  had  to  leave  it  in  the  colder  months  for  Tivoli  or 
Baias.  He  built  a  villa  upon  it,  or  added  to  one  already 
there,  the  traces  of  which  still  exist.  The  farm  gave 
employment  to  five  families  of  free  coloni,  who  were 
under  the  superintendence  of  a  bailiff ;  and  the  poet's 
domestic  establishment  was  composed  of  eight  slaves. 
The  site  of  the  farm  is  at  the  present  day  a  favourite 
resort  of  travellers,  of  Englishmen  especially,  who  visit 
it  in  such  numbers,  and  trace  its  features  with  such 
enthusiasm,  that  the  resident  peasantry,  "  who  cannot 
conceive  of  any  other  source  of  interest  in  one  so  long 
dead  and  unsainted  than  that  of  co-patriotism  or  con- 
sanguinity," believe  Horace  to  have  been  an  English- 
man.* ^Yhat  aspect  it  presented  in  Horace'*  time  w«. 
gather  from  one  of  his  Epistles  (I.  1G)  : — 

"  About  my  firm,  dear  Quinctius  :  You  would  know 
What  sort  of  produce  for  its  lord  'twill  grow  • 
Plough-land  is  it,  or  meadow-land,  ox  soil 
For  apples,  vine-clad  elms,  or  olive-oil  ? 
So  (but  you'll  think  me  garrulous)  I'll  write 
A  full  description  of  its  form  and  site. 
In  long  continuous  lines  the  mountains  run, 
Cleft  by  a  valley,  which  twice  feels  the  sun — 
Once  on  the  right,  when  first  he  lifts  his  beams  ; 
Once  on  the  left,  when  he  descends  in  steams. 
You'd  praise  the  climate  ;  well,  and  what  d'ye  say 
To  sloes  and  cornels  hanging  from  the  spray  ? 
What  to  the  oak  and  ilex,  that  afford 
Fruit  to  the  cattle,  shelter  to  their  lord  ? 
What,  but  that  rich  Tarentum  must  have  been 
Transplanted  nearer  Rome,  with  all  its  green  ? 

*  Letter  by  Mr  Dennis  :  Milman's  '  Horace.'     London,  1849 
P.  109. 


70  HORACE. 

Then  there's  a  fountain,  of  sufficient  size 
To  name  the  river  that  takes  thence  its  rise- 
Not  Thracian  Hebrus  colder  or  more  pure, 
Of  power  the  head's  and  stomach's  ills  to  cure. 
.  This  sweet  retirement — nay,  'tis  more  than  sweet — 
Insures  my  health  even  in  September's  heat."     (C.) 

Here  is  what  a  last  year's  tourist  found  it :  * — 

"  Following  a  path  along  the  brink  of  the  torrent  Digen 
tia,  we  passed  a  towering  rock,  on  which  once  stood  Vacu- 
na's  shrine,  and  entered  a  pastoral  region  of  well- watered 
meadow-lands,  enamelled  with  flowers  and  studded  with 
chestnut  and  fruit  trees.  Beneath  their  sheltering  shade 
peasants  were  whiling  away  the  noontide  hours.  Here  sat 
Daphnis  piping  sweet  witching  melodies  on  a  reed  to  his 
.rustic  Phidyle,  whilst  Lydia  and  she  wove  wreaths  of  wild- 
flowers,  and  Lyce  sped  down  to  the  edge  of  the  stream  and 
brought  us  cooling  drink  in  a  bulging  conca  borne  on  her 
head.  Its  waters  were  as  deliciously  refreshing  as  they 
could  have  been  when  the  poet  himself  gratefully  recorded 
how  often  they  revived  his  strength  ;  and  one  longed  to 
think,  and  hence  half  believed,  that  our  homely  Hebe,  like 
her  fellows,  was  sprung  from  the  coloni  who  tilled  his 
fields  and  dwelt  in  the  live  homesteads  of  which  he  sings. 
.  .  .  Near  the  little  village  of  Licenza,  standing  like  its 
loftier  neighbour,  Civitella,  on  a  steep  hill  at  the  foot  of 
Lucretilis,  we  turned  off  the  path,  crossed  a  thickly-wooded 
knoll,  and  came  to  an  orchard,  in  which  two  young  labour- 
ers were  at  work.  We  asked  where  the  remains  of  Horace's 
farm  were.  '  A  pi$  tui  /'  answered  the  nearest  of  them, 
in  a  dialect  more  like  Latin  than  Italian.  So  saying,  he 
began  with  a  shovel  to  uncover  a  massive  floor  in  very  fair 
preservation  ;  a  little  farther  on  was  another,  crumbling  to 
pieces.  Chaupy  has  luckily  saved  one  all  doubt  as  to  the 
Bite  of  the  farm,  establishing  to  our  minds  convincingly 

*  '  Pall  Mall  Gazette,'  August  16,  1869. 


THE  SABINE  FARM  Til  EX  AND  NOW.  71 

that  it  could  scarcely  have  stood  on  ground  other  than  that 
on  which  at  this  moment  we  were.  As  the  shovel  was  clear- 
ing the  floors,  we  thought  how  applicable  to  Horace  himself 
were  the  lines  he  addressed  to  Fuse  us  Aristius,  '  Naturam 
expelles,'  &c. — 

"  '  Drive  Nature  forth  by  force,  she'll  turn  and  rout 

The  false  refinements  that  would  keep  her  out ; '    (C.) 

For  here  was  just  enough  of  his  home  left  to  show  how  na- 
ture, creeping  on  step  by  step,  had  overwhelmed  his  handi- 
work and  reasserted  her  sway.  Again,  pure  and  Augustan 
in  design  as  was  the  pavement  before  us,  how  little  could  it 
vie  with  the  hues  and  odours  of  the  grasses  that  bloomed 
around  it ! — '  Deterins  Lybicis'  &c. — 

'  Is  springing  grass  less  sweet  to  nose  and  eyes 
Than  Libyan  marble's  tesselated  dyes  V     (C.) 

"  Indeed,  so  striking  were  these  coincidences  that  we  were 
as  nearly  as  possible  going  off  on  the  wrong  tack,  and  sing- 
ing '  Io  Pa3an'  to  Dame  Nature  herself  at  the  expense  of 
the  bard  ;  but  we  were  soon  brought  back  to  our  alleud- 
ance  by  a  sense  of  the  way  in  which  all  we  saw  tallied 
with  the  description  of  him  who  sang  of  nature  so  surpas- 
singly well,  who  challenges  posterity  in  charmed  accents, 
and  could  shape  the  sternest  and  most  concise  of  tongues 
into  those  melodious  cadences  that  invest  his  undying  verse 
with  all  the  magic  of  music  and  all  the  freshness  of  youth. 
For  this  was  clearly  the  *  angulus  iste,'  the  nook  which 
'  restored  him  to  himself — this  the  lovely  spot  which  his 
steward  longed  to  exchange  for  the  slums  of  Rome.  Below 
lay  the  greensward  by  the  river,  where  it  was  sweet  to  re- 
cline in  slumber.  Here  grew  the  vines,  still  trained,  like 
his  own,  on  the  trunks  and  branches  of  trees.  Yonder  the 
brook  which  the  rain  would  swell,  till  it  overflowed  its 
margin,  and  his  lazy  steward  and  slaves  were  fain  to  bank 
it  up  ;  and  above,  among  a  wild  jumble  of  hills,  lay  the 


72  iiorace. 

woods  where,  on  the  Calends  of  March,  Faunus  interposed 
to  save  him  from  the  falling  tree,  and  where  another  miracle 
preserved  him  from  the  attack  of  the  wolf  as  he  strolled 
along  unarmed,  singing  of  the  soft  voice  and  sweet  smiles 
of  his  Lalage !  The  brook  is  now  nearly  dammed  up  ;  a 
wall  of  close-fitting  rough-hewn  stones  gathers  its  waters 
into  a  still,  dark  pool  ;  its  overflow  gushes  out  in  a  tiny  rill 
that  rushed  down  beside  our  path,  mingling  its  murmur 
with  the  hum  of  mvriads  of  insects  that  swarmed  in  the 


air." 


On  this  farm  lovers  of  Horace  have  been  fain  to 
place  the  fountain  of  Bandusia,  which  the  poet  loved 
so  well,  and  to  which  he  prophesied,  and  truly,  as 
the  issue  has  proved,  immortality  from  his  song 
(Odes,  III.  13).  Charming  as  the  poem  is,  there  could 
be  no  stronger  proof  of  the  poet's  hold  upon  the  hearts 
of  men  of  all  ages  than  the  enthusiasm  with  which  the 
very  site  of  the  spring  has  been  contested. 

"  Bandusia's  fount,  in  clearness  crystalline, 
0  worthy  of  the  wine,  the  flowers  we  vow  ! 
To-morrow  shall  be  thine 
A  kid,  whose  crescent  brow 

"  Is  sprouting,  all  for  love  and  victory, 

In  vain  ;  his  warm  red  blood,  so  early  stirred, 
Thy  gelid  stream  shall  dye, 
Child  of  the  wanton  herd. 

u  Thee  the  fierce  Sirian  star,  to  madness  fired, 

Forbears  to  touch  ;  sweet  cool  thy  waters  yield 
To  ox  with  ploughing  tired, 
And  flocks  that  range  afield. 

"  Thou  too  one  day  shall  win  proud  eminence 
'Mid  honoured  founts,  while  I  the  ilex  sing 


LOVE  FOR   THE  SABINE  FARM.  73 

Crowning  the  cavern,  whence 

Thy  babbling  wavelets  spring."     (C.) 

Several  commentators  maintain,  on  what  appears  to 
be  very  inconclusive  grounds,  that  the  fountain  was 
at  Palazzo,  six  miles  from  Venusia.  But  the  poem 
is  obviously  inspired  by  a  fountain  whose  babble  had 
often  soothed  the  ear  of  Horace,  long  after  lie  had 
ceased  to  visit  Venusia.  On  his  farm,  therefore,  let  us 
believe  it  to  exist,  whichever  of  the  springs  that  are 
still  there  we  may  choose  to  identify  with  his  descrip- 
tion. For  there  are  several,  and  the  local  guides  are 
by  no  means  dogmatic  as  to  the  "  vero  fonte."  That 
known  as  the  *'  Fonte  della  Corte"  seems  to  make  out 
the  strongest  case  for  itself.  It  is  within  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  of  the  villa,  most  abundant,  and  in  this 
respect  "  fit  "  to  name  the  river  that  there  takes  its  rise, 
which  the  others — at  present,  at  least — certainly  are  not 

Horace  is  never  weary  of  singing  the  praises  of  his 
mountain  home — "  Satis  heatus  unicis  Sabinis" 

"  With  what  I  have  completely  blest, 
My  happy  little  Sabine  nest" — 

Odes,  II.  18. 

are  the  words  in  which  he  contrasts  his  own  entire 
happiness  with  the  restless  misery  of  a  millionaire  in 
the  midst  of  his  splendour.  Again,  in  one  of  his  Odes 
to  Mascenas  (III.  16)  he  takes  up  and  expands  the 
same  theme. 

"  In  my  crystal  stream,  my  woodland,  though  its  acres  are 

but  few, 
And  the  kust  that  I  shall  gather  home  my  crops  in  season 

due, 


74  HORACE. 

Lies  a  joy,  which  he  may  never  grasp,  who  rules  in  gor- 
geous state 
Fertile  Africa's  dominions.     Happier,  happier  far  my  fate  ! 
Though  for  me  no  bees  Calabrian  store  their  honey,  nor 

cloth  wine 
Sickening  in  the  Lsestrygonian  amphora  for  me  refine  ; 
Though  for  me  no  flocks  unnumbered,  browsing  Gallia's 

pastures  fair, 
Pant  beneath  their  swelling  fleeces,  I  at  least  am  free  from 

care  ; 
Haggard  want  with  direful  clamour  ravins  never  at  my 

door, 
Nor  would st  thou,  if  more  I  wanted,  oh  my  friend,  deny 

me  more. 
Appetites  subdued  will  make  me  richer  with  my  scanty 

gains, 
Than  the  realms  of  Alyattes  wedded  to  Mvgdonia's  plains. 
Much  will  evermore   be  wanting  unto  those  who   much 

demand  ; 
Blest,  whom  Jove  with  what  sufficeth  dowers,  but  dowers 

with  sparing  hand." 

It  is  the  nook  of  earth,  which,  beyond  all  others,  has 
a  charm  for  him, — the  one  spot  where  he  is  all  his 
own.     Here,  as  Wordsworth  beautifully  says,  he 

"Exults  in  freedom,  can  with  rapture  vouch 
For  the  dear  blessings  of  a  lowly  couch, 
A  natural  meal,  days,  months  from  Nature's  hand, 
Time,  place,  and  business  all  at  his  command/' 

It  is  in  this  delightful  retreat  that,  in  one  of  his  most 
graceful  Odes,  he  thus  invites  the  fair  Tyndaris  to  pay 
him  a  visit  (I.  17)  : — 

"  My  own  sweet  Lucre!  il  is  oft  lime  can  lure 

From  his  native  Lycaaua  kind  Faunus  the  ileet, 


LOVE  FOR   THE  SABINE  FARM.  75 

To  watch  o'er  my  ilocks,  and  to  keep  them  secure 

From  summer's  fierce  winds,  and  its  rains,  and  its  heat. 

"  Then  the  mates  of  a  lord  of  too  pungent  a  fragrance 
Securely  through  brake  and  o'er  precipice  climb, 

And  crop,  as  they  wander  in  happiest  vagrance, 
The  arbutus  green,  and  the  sweet-scented  thyme. 

"  Nor  murderous  wolf  nor  tureen  snake  may  assail 
My  innocent  kidlings,  dear  Tyndaris,  when 

His  pipings  resound  through  Ustica's  low  vale, 

Till  each  mossed  rock  in  music  makes  answer  again. 

u  The  muse  is  still  dear  to  the  gods,  and  they  shield 
Me,  their  dutiful  bard  ;  with  a  bounty  divine 

They  have  blessed  me  with  all  that  the  country  can  yield  ; 
Then  come,  and  whatever  I  have  shall  be  thine  ! 

"  Here  screened  from  the  dog-star,  in  valley  retired, 

Shalt  thou  sing  that  old  song  thou  canst  warble  so  well, 

Which  tells  how  one  passion  Penelope  fired, 
And  charmed  fickle  Circe  herself  by  its  spell. 

"  Here  cups  shalt  thou  sip,  'neath  the  broad  spreading  shade 
Of  the  innocent  vintage  of  Lesbos  at  ease  ; 

No  fumes  of  hot  ire  shall  our  banquet  invade, 
Or  mar  that  sweet  festival  under  the  trees. 

"And  fear  not,  lest  Cyrus,  that  jealous  young  bear, 
On  thy  poor  little  self  his  rude  fingers  should  set — 

Should  pluck  from  thy  bright  locks  the  chaplet,  and  tear 
Thy  dress,  that  ne'er  harmed  him  nor  any  one  yet." 

Had  Milton  this  Ode  in  his  thought,  when  he  invited 
his  friend  Lawes  to  a  repast, 

"  Light  and  choice, 
Of  Attic  taste  with  wine,  whence  we  may  rise, 
To  hear  the  lute  well  touched,  and  artful  voice 
Warble  immortal  notes,  and  Tuscan  air"  ? 


76  IIORA  CE. 

The  reference  in  the  last  verse  to  the  violence  of  the 
lady's  lover — a  violence  of  which  ladies  of  her  class 
were  constantly  the  victims — rather  suggests  that  this 
Ode,  if  addressed  to  a  real  personage  at  all,  was  meant 
less  as  an  invitation  to  the  Sabine  farm  than  as  a 
balm  to  the  lady's  wounded  spirit. 

In  none  of  his  poems  is  the  poet's  deep  delight  in 
the  country  life  of  his  Sabine  home  more  apparent 
than  in  the  following  (Satires,  II.  6),  which,  both  for 
its  biographical  interest  and  as  a  specimen  of  his  best 
manner  in  his  Satires,  we  give  entire  : — 

"  My  prayers  with  this  I  used  to  charge, — 
A  piece  of  land  not  very  large, 
Wherein  there  should  a  garden  be, 
A  clear  spring  flowing  ceaselessly, 
And  where,  to  crown  the  whole,  there  should 
A  patch  be  found  of  growing  wood. 

All  this,  and  more,  the  gods  have  sent, 
And  I  am  heartily  content. 
Oh  son  of  Maia,  that  I  may 
These  bounties  keep  is  all  I  pray. 
If  ne'er  by  craft  or  base  design 
I've  swelled  what  little  store  is  mine, 
Nor  mean,  it  ever  shall  be  wrecked 
By  profligacy  or  neglect ; 
If  nev,er  from  my  lips  a  word 
Shall  drop  of  wishes  so  absurd 
As, — '  Had  I  but  that  little  nook 
Next  to  my  land,  that  spoils  its  look  ! ' 
Or — 'Would  some  lucky  chance  unfold 
A  crock  to  me  of  hidden  gold, 
As  to  the  man  whom  Hercules 
Enriched  and  settled  at  his  case, 


SATIRE  II.   6.  77 

Who,  with  the  treasure  he  had  found, 
Bought  for  himself  the  very  ground 
Which  he  before  for  hire  had  tilled  ! ' 
If  I  with  gratitude  am  filled 
For  what  I  have — by  this  I  dare 
Adjure  you  to  fulfil  my  prayer, 
That  you  with  fatness  will  endow 
My  little  herd  of  cattle  now, 
And  all  things  else  their  lord  may  own, 
Except  his  sorry  wits  alone, 
And  be,  as  heretofore,  my  chief 
Protector,  guardian,  and  relief ! 
So,  when  from  town  and  all  its  ills 
I  to  my  perch  among  the  hills 
Retreat,  what  better  theme  to  choose 
Than  satire  for  my  homely  Muse  ? 
No  fell  ambition  wastes  me  there, 
No,  nor  the  south  wind's  leaden  air, 
Nor  Autumn's  pestilential  breath, 
With  victims  feeding  hungry  death. 
Sire  of  the  morn,  or  if  more  dear 
The  name  of  Janus  to  thine  ear, 
Tlirough  whom  whate'er  by  man  is  done, 
From  life's  first  dawning,  is  begun 
(So  willed  the  gods  for  man's  estate), 
Do  thou  my  verse  initiate  ! 
At  Rome  you  hurry  me  away 
To  bail  my  friend  ;  '  Quick,  no  delay, 
Or  some  one — could  worse  luck  befall  you  ? — 
Will  in  the  kindly  task  forestall  you.' 
So  go  I  must,  although  the  wind 
Is  north  and  killingly  unkind, 
Or  snow,  in  thickly -falling  flakes, 
The  wintry  day  more  wintry  makes. 
And  when,  articulate  and  clear, 
I've  spoken  what  may  cost  me  dear, 


78  IIORA  CE. 

Elbowing  the  crowd  that  round  me  close, 

I'm  sure  to  crush  somebody's  toes. 

'I  say,  where  are  you  pushing  to  ? 

What  would  you  have,  you  madman,  you?5 

So  flies  he  at  poor  me,  'tis  odds, 

And  curses  me  by  all  his  gods. 

'  You  think  that  you,  now,  I  daresay, 

May  push  whatever  stops  your  way, 

When  you  are  to  Maecenas  bound  ! ' 

Sweet,  sweet,  as  honey  is  the  sound, 

I  won't  deny,  of  that  last  speech, 

But  then  no  sooner  do  I  reach 

The  dusky  Escpiiline,  than  straight 

Buzz,  buzz  around  me  runs  the  prate 

Of  people  pestering  me  with  cares, 

All  about  other  men's  affairs. 

'  To-morrow,  Roscius  bade  me  state, 

He  trusts  you'll  be  in  court  by  eight ! ' 

'  The  scriveners,  worthy  Quintus,  pray, 

You'll  not  forget  they  meet  to-day, 

U  pon  a  point  both  grave  and  new, 

One  touching  the  whole  body,  too.' 

'  Do  get  Maecenas,  do,  to  sign 

This  application  here  of  mine  ! ' 

'  Well,  well,  I'll  try.'     '  You  can  with  ease 

Arrange  it,  if  you  only  please.' 

Close  on  eight  years  it  now  must  be, 
Since  first  Maecenas  numbered  me 
Among  his  friends,  as  one  to  take 
Out  driving  with  him,  and  to  make 
The  confidant  of  trifles,  say, 
Like  this,  '  What  is  the  time  of  day  ?' 
'  The  Thracian  gladiator,  can 
One  match  him  with  the  Syrian  V 
*  These  chilly  mornings  will  do  harm, 
If  one  don't  mind  to  wrap  up  warm  ;' 


SATIRE   IT.    6.  79 

Such  nothings  as  without  a  fear 

One  drops  into  the  ehinkiest  ear. 

Yet  all  this  time  hath  envy?s  glance 

On  me  looked  more  and  more  askance. 

From  mouth  to  mouth  such  comments  run : 

'  Our  friend  indeed  is  Fortune's  son. 

Why,  there  he  was,  the  other  day, 

Beside  Maecenas  at  the  play  ; 

And  at  the  Campus,  just  before, 

They  had  a  bout  at  battledore.' 

Some  chilling  news  through  lane  and  street 

Spreads  from  the  Forum.     All  I  meet 

Accost  me  thus — '  Dear  friend,  you're  so 

Close  to  the  gods,  that  you  must  know  : 

About  the  Dacians,  have  you  heard 

Any  fresh  tidings  ?     Not  a  word  ! ' 

1  You're  always  jesting  ! '     '  Now  may  all 

The  gods  confound  me,  great  and  small, 

If  I  have  heard  one  word  ! '     '  Well,  well, 

But  you  at  any  rate  can  tell, 

If  Caesar  means  the  lands,  which  he 

Has  promised  to  his  troops,  shall  be 

Selected  from  Italian  ground, 

Or  in  Trinacria  be  found  ? ' 

And  when  I  swear,  as  well  I  can, 

That  I  know  nothing,  for  a  man 

Of  silence  rare  and  most  discreet 

The}-  cry  me  up  to  all  the  street. 

Thus  do  my  wasted  days  slip  by, 
Not  without  many  a  wish  and  sigh, 
When,  when  shall  I  the  country  see, 
Its  woodlands  green, — oh,  when  be  free, 
With  books  of  great  old  men,  and  sleep, 
And  hours  of  dreamy  ease,  to  creep 
Into  oblivion  sweet  of  life, 


80  HORACE. 

Its  agitations  and  its  strife  ?  * 
When  on  my  table  shall  be  seen 
Pythagoras  s  kinsman  bean, 
And  bacon,  not  too  fat,  embellish 
My  dish  of  greens,  and  give  it  relish  ? 
Oh  happy  nights,  oh  feasts  divine, 
When,  with  the  friends  I  love,  I  dine 
At  mine  own  hearth-fire,  and  the  meat 
We  leave  gives  my  bluff  hinds  a  treat ! 
No  stupid  laws  our  feasts  control, 
But  each  guest  drains  or  leaves  the  bowi 
Precisely  as  he  feels  inclined. 
If  he  be  strong,  and  have  a  mind 
For  bumpers,  good  !  if  not,  he's  free 
To  sip  his  liquor  leisurely. 
And  then  the  talk  our  banquet  rouses  ! 
But  not  about  our  neighbours'  houses, 
Or  if  'tis  generally  thought 
That  Lepos  dances  well  or  not  ?  t 
But  what  concerns  us  nearer,  and 
Is  harmful  not  to  understand, 
Whether  by  wealth  or  worth,  'tis  plain, 
That  men  to  happiness  attain  ? 

*  Many   have    imitated    this    passage  —  none   better  than 
Cowley. 

"  Oil  fountains  !  when  in  you  shall  I 
Myself,  eased  of  unpeaceful  thoughts,  espy? 
Oh  fields  !  oh  woods  !  when,  when  shall  I  be  made 
The  happy  tenant  of  your  shade? 
Here's  the  spring-head  of  pleasure's  flood, 
Where  all  the  riches  be,  that  she 
Has  coined  and  stamped  for  good." 

t  How  like  is  this  to  Tennyson's— 

"  You'll  have  no  scandal  while  you  dine, 
But  honest  talk  and  wholesome  wine, 

And  only  hear  the  magpie  gossip 
Garrulous,  under  a  roof  of  pine." 


THE   TOWN  AND   COUNTRY   MOUSE.  81 

By  what  we're  led  to  choose  our  friends, — 
Regard  for  them,  or  our  own  ends  ? 
In  what  does  good  consist,  and  what 
Is  the  supremest  form  of  that  ? 
And  then  friend  Cervius  will  strike  in 
With  some  old  grandam's  tale,  akin 
To  what  we  are  discussing.     Thus, 
If  some  one  have  cried  up  to  us 
Arellius'  wealth,  forgetting  how 
Much  care  it  costs  him,  '  Look  you  now, 
Once  on  a  time,'  he  will  begin, 
'  A  country  mouse  received  within 
His  rugged  cave  a  city  brother, 
As  one  old  comrade  would  another. 
"  A  frugal  mouse  upon  the  whole, 
But  loved  his  friend,  and  had  a  soul," 
And  could  be  free  and  open-handed, 
"When  hospitality  demanded. 
In  brief,  he  did  not  spare  his  hoard 
Of  corn  and  pease,  long  coyly  stored ; 
Raisins  he  brought,  ami  scraps,  to  boot, 
Half-gnawed,  of  bacon,  which  he  put 
"With  his  own  mouth  before  his  guest, 
In  hopes,  by  offering  his  best 
In  such  variety,  he  might 
Persuade  him  to  an  appetite. 
But  still  the  cit,  with  languid  eye, 
Just  picked  a  bit,  then  put  it  by ; 
Which  with  dismay  the  rustic  saw, 
As,  stretched  upon  some  stubbly  straw, 
He  munched  at  bran  and  common  grits, 
Not  venturing  on  the  dainty  bits. 
At  length  the  town  mouse  ;  "  What,"  says  he, 
"  My  good  friend,  can  the  pleasure  be, 
Of  grubbing  here,  on  the  backbone 
Of  a  great  crag  with  trees  o'ergrown  ? 
k.  c.  vol.  vi.  F 


82  HORA  CE. 

Who'd  not  to  these  wild  woods  prefer 

The  city,  with  its  crowds  and  stir  ? 

Then  come  with  me  to  town  ;  you'll  ne'er 

Regret  the  hour  that  took  you  there. 

All  earthly  things  draw  mortal  breath  ; 

Nor  great  nor  little  can  from  death 

Escape,  and  therefore,  friend,  be  gay, 

Enjoy  life's  good  things  while  you  may, 

Remembering  how  brief  the  space 

Allowed  to  you  in  any  case." 

His  words  strike  home  ;  and,  light  of  heart, 

Behold  with  him  our  rustic  start, 

Timing  their  journey  so,  they  might 

Reach  town  beneath  the  cloud  of  nmht, 

"Which  was  at  its  high  noon,  when  they 

To  a  rich  mansion  found  their  way, 

Where  shining  ivory  couches  vied 

With  coverlets  in  purple  dyed, 

And  where  in  baskets  were  amassed 

The  wrecks  of  a  superb  repast, 

Which  some  few  hours  before  had  closed. 

There,  having  first  his  friend  disposed 

Upon  a  purple  tissue,  straight 

The  city  mouse  begins  to  wait 

With  scraps  upon  his  country  brother, 

Each  scrap  more  dainty  than  another, 

And  all  a  servant's  duty  proffers, 

First  tasting  everything  he  offers. 

The  guest,  reclining  there  in  state, 

Rejoices  in  his  altered  fate, 

O'er  each  fresh  tidbit  smacks  his  lips. 

And  breaks  into  the  merriest  quips, 

When  suddenly  a  banging  door 

Shakes  host  and  guest  into  the  floor. 

From  room  to  room  they  rush  aghast, 

And  almost  drop  down  dead  at  last, 


SATIRISES  HIMSELF.  83 

When  loud  through  all  the  house  resounds 

The  dee])  bay  of  Molossian  hounds. 

"  Ho  !  "  cries  the  country  mouse,  "  this  kind 

Of  life  is  not  for  me,  I  find. 

Give  me  my  woods  and  cavern  !     There 

At  least  I'm  safe  !     And  though  both  spare 

And  poor  my  food  may  be,  rebel 

I  never  will ;  so,  fare  ye  well  ! "  '" 

Tt  is  characteristic  of  Horace  that  in  the  very  next 
satire  he  makes  his  own  servant  Davus  tell  him  that 
his  rhapsodies  about  the  country  and  its  charms  are . 
mere  humbug,  and  that,  for  all  his  ridicide  of  the* 
shortcomings  of  his  neighbours,  he  is  just  as  incon-' 
stant  as  they  are  in  his  likings  and  dislikings.  The 
poet  in  this  way  lets  us  see  into  his  own  little  vanities, 
and  secures  the  right  by  doing  so  to  rally  his  friends 
for  theirs.  To  his  valet,  at  all  events,  by  his  own 
showing,  he  is  no  hero. 


u 


You're  praising  up  incessantly 

The  habits,  manners,  likings,  ways, 

Of  people  in  the  good  old  days  ; 

Yet  should  some  god  this  moment  give 

To  you  the  power,  like  them  to  live, 

You're  just  the  man  to  say,  '  I  won't ! ' 

Because  in  them  you  either  don't 

Believe,  or  else  the  courage  lack, 

The  truth  through  thick  and  thin  to  back, 

And,  rather  than  its  heights  aspire, 

Will  go  on  sticking  in  the  mire. 

At  Rome  you  for  the  country  sigh  ; 

When  in  the  country  to  the  sky 

You,  flighty  as  the  thistle's  down, 

Are  always  crying  up  the  town. 

If  no  one  asks  you  out  to  dine 


84  HORACE. 

Oh,  then  the  pot-au-feii's  divine  ! 

'You  go  out  on  compulsion  only — 

'Tis  so  delightful  to  be  lonely  ; 

And  drinking  bumpers  is  a  bore 

You  shrink  from  daily  more  and  more.' 

But  only  let  Maecenas  send 

Command  for  you  to  meet  a  friend ; 

Although  the  message  comes  so  late, 

The  lamps  are  being  lighted,  straight, 

'  Where's  my  pommade  ?  Look  sharp  ! '  you  snout, 

*  Heavens  !  is  there  nobody  about  ? 

Are  you  all  deaf  ? '  and,  storming  high 

At  all  the  household,  oil'  you  fly. 

When  Milvius,  and  that  set,  anon 

Arrive  to  dine,  and  find  you  gone, 

With  vigorous  curses  they  retreat, 

Which  I  had  rather  not  repeat." 

Who  could  take  amiss  the  rebuke  of  the  kindly  satirist, 
who  was  so  ready  to  show  up  his  own  weaknesses1? 
In  this  respect  our  own  great  satirist  Thackeray  is  very 
like  him.  Nor  is  this  strange.  They  had  many 
points  in  common — the  same  keen  eye  for  human  folly, 
the  same  tolerance  for  the  human  weaknesses  of  which 
thev  were  so  conscious  in  themselves,  the  same  genuine 
kindness  of  heart.  Thackeray's  terse  and  vivid  style, 
too,  is  probably  in  some  measure  due  to  this,  that  to 
him,  as  to  Malherbe,  Horace  was  a  kind  of  breviary. 


CHAPTER    V. 

LIFE   IX   ROME. — HORACE'S  BORE. — EXTRAVAGANCE   OF   THE 

ROMAN   DINNERS. 

It  is  one  of  the  many  charms  of  Horace's  didactic 
writings,  that  he  takes  ns  into  the  very  heart  of  the 
life  of  Rome.  We  lounge  with  its  loungers  along  the 
Via  Sacra ;  we  stroll  into  the  Campus  Martius,  where 
young  Hebrus  with  his  noble  horsemanship  is  witch- 
ing the  blushing  ]STeobule,  already  too  much  enamoured 
of  the  handsome  Liparian ;  and  the  men  of  the  old 
school  are  getting  up  an  appetite  by  games  of  tennis, 
bowls,  or  quoits  ;  while  the  young  Grecianised  fops — 
lisping  feeble  jokes — saunter  by  with  a  listless  con- 
tempt for  such  vulgar  gymnastics.  AYe  are  in  the 
Via  Appia.  Barine  sweeps  along  in  her  chariot  in 
superb  toilette,  shooting  glances  from  her  sleepy  cruel 
eyes.  The  young  fellows  are  all  agaze.  "What  is  this  ? 
Young  Pompilius,  not  three  months  married,  bows  to 
her,  with  a  visible  spasm  at  the  heart,  as  she  hurries 
by,  full  in  view  of  his  young  wife,  who  hides  her 
mortification  within  the  curtains  of  her  litter,  and 
hastens  home  to  solitude  and  tears.  Here  comes 
Barrus — as  ugly  a  dog  as  any  in  Rome — dressed  to 
death*    and    smiling    Malvolic  -  smiles  of   self- com- 


84  HORACE. 

Oh,  then  the  pot-au-feu's  divine  ! 

'You  go  out  on  compulsion  only — 

'Tis  so  delightful  to  be  lonely  ; 

And  drinking  bumpers  is  a  bore 

You  shrink  from  daily  more  and  more.' 

But  only  let  Maecenas  send 

Command  for  you  to  meet  a  friend ; 

Although  the  message  comes  so  late, 

The  lamps  are  being  lighted,  straight, 

*  Where's  my  pommade  ?  Look  sharp  ! '  you  snout, 

'  Heavens  !  is  there  nobody  about  ? 

Are  you  all  deaf  ? '  and,  storming  high 

At  all  the  household,  off  you  fly. 

When  Milvius,  and  that  set,  anon 

Arrive  to  dine,  and  find  you  gone, 

With  vigorous  curses  they  retreat, 

Which  I  had  rather  not  repeat." 

Who  could  take  amiss  the  rebuke  of  the  kindly  satirist, 
who  was  so  ready  to  show  up  his  own  weaknesses1? 
In  this  respect  our  own  great  satirist  Thackeray  is  very 
like  him.  Nor  is  this  strange.  They  had  many 
points  in  common — the  same  keen  eye  for  human  folly, 
the  same  tolerance  for  the  human  weaknesses  of  which, 
thev  were  so  conscious  in  themselves,  the  same  genuine 
kindness  of  heart.  Thackeray's  terse  and  vivid  style, 
too,  is  probably  in  some  measure  due  to  this,  that  to 
him,  as  to  Malherbe,  Horace  was  a  kind  of  breviary. 


CHAPTER    V. 

LIFE   IN   ROME. — HORACE'S  BORE. — EXTRAVAGANCE   OF   THE 

ROMAN  DINNERS. 

It  is  one  of  the  many  charms  of  Horace's  didactic 
writings,  that  he  takes  us  into  the  very  heart  of  the 
life  of  Rome.  We  lounge  with  its  loungers  along  the 
Via  Sacra ;  we  stroll  into  the  Campus  Martius,  where 
young  Hebrus  with  his  noble  horsemanship  is  witch- 
ing the  blushing  ]STeobule,  already  too  much  enamoured 
of  the  handsome  Liparian ;  and  the  men  of  the  old 
school  are  getting  up  an  appetite  by  games  of  tennis, 
bowls,  or  quoits  ;  while  the  young  Grecianised  fops — 
lisping  feeble  jokes — saunter  by  with  a  listiess  con- 
tempt for  such  vulgar  gymnastics.  "We  are  in  the 
Via  Appia.  Barine  sweeps  along  in  her  chariot  in 
superb  toilette,  shooting  glances  from  her  sleepy  cruel 
eyes.  The  young  fellows  are  all  agaze.  What  is  this  1 
Young  Pompilius,  not  three  months  married,  bows  to 
her,  with  a  visible  spasm  at  the  heart,  as  she  hurries 
by,  full  in  view  of  his  young  wife,  who  hides  her 
mortification  within  the  curtains  of  her  litter,  and 
hastens  home  to  solitude  and  tears.  Here  comes 
Barrus — as  ugly  a  dog  as  any  in  Rome — dressed  to 
death:    and    smiling    Malvolic  -  smiles  of   self- com- 


56  HORACE. 

placency.  The  girls  titter  and  exchange  glances  as 
he  passes  ;  Barrus  swaggers  on,  feeling  himself  an 
inch  taller  in  the  conviction  that  he  is  slaughtering 
the  hearts  of  the  dear  creatures  by  the  score.  A  mule, 
with  a  dead  "boar  thrown  across  it,  now  winds  its  way 
among  the  chariots  and  litters.  A  little  ahead  of  it 
stalks  Gargilius,  attended  by  a  strong  force  of  retainers 
armed  with  spears  and  nets,  enough  to  thin  the  game 
of  the  Hercynian  forest.  Little  does  the  mighty 
hunter  dream,  that  all  his  friends,  who  congratulate 
him  on  his  success,  are  asking  themselves  and  each 
other,  where  he  bought  the  boar,  and  for  how  much? 
Have  Ave  never  encountered  a  piscatory  Gargilius  near 
the  Spey  or  the  Tweed  1  "We  wander  back  into  the 
city  and  its  narrow  streets.  In  one  we  are  jammed 
into  a  doorway  by  a  train  of  builders'  waggons  laden 
with  huge  blocks  of  stone,  or  massive  logs  of  timber. 
Escaping  these,  we  run  against  a  line  of  undertakers' 
men,  "  performing ,:  a  voluminous  and  expensive 
funeral,  to  the  discomfort  of  evervbodv  and  the  im- 
poverishment  of  the  dead  man's  kindred.  In  the 
next  street  we  run  the  risk  of  being  crushed  by  some 
huge  piece  of  masonry  in  the  act  of  being  swung  by 
a  crane  into  its  place;  and  while  calculating  the 
chances  of  its  fall  with  upturned  eye,  we  find  our- 
selves landed  in  the  gutter  by  an  unclean  pig,  which 
has  darted  between  our  legs  at  some  attractive  garbage 
beyond.  This  peril  over,  we  encounter  at  the  next 
turning  a  mad  dog,  who  makes  a  passing  snap  at  our 
toga  as  he  darts  into  a  neighbouring  blind  alley,  whither 
we  do  not  care  to  follow  his  vagaries  among  a  covey 


LIFE  IN  ROME.  87 

of  young  Roman  street  Arabs.  Before  we  reach  home 
a  mumping  beggar  drops  before  us  as  we  turn  the 
corner,  in  a  well-simulated  fit  of  epilepsy  or  of  help- 
less lameness.  l Quwre  peregrinum' — "  Try  that  game 
on  country  cousins," — we  mutter  in  our  beard,  and 
retreat  to  our  lodgings  on  the  third  floor,  encountering 
probably  on  the  stair  some  half-tipsy  artisan  or  slave, 
who  is  descending  from  the  attics  for  another  cup  of 
fiery  wine  at  the  nearest  wine -shop.  We  go  to  the 
theatre.  The  play  is  "  Ilione,"  by  Pacuvius  ;  the 
scene  a  highly  sensational  one,  where  the  ghost  of 
Deiphobus,  her  son,  appearing  to  Ilione,  beseeches  her 
to  give  his  body  burial.  "  Oh  mother,  mother,"  he 
cries,  in  tones  most  raucously  tragic,  "  hear  me 
call!"  But  the  Kynaston  of  the  day  who  plays 
Ilione  has  been  soothing  his  maternal  sorrow  with 
too  potent  Falernian.  He  slumbers  on.  The  popu- 
lace, like  the  gods  of  our  gallery,  surmise  the  truth, 
and,  "  Oh  !  mother,  mother,  hear  me  call!"  is  bellowed 
from  a  thousand  lungs.  AVe  are  enjoying  a  comedy, 
when  our  friends  the  people,  "  the  many-headed  mon- 
ster of  the  pit,"  begin  to  think  it  slow,  and  stop  the 
performance  with  shouts  for  a  show  of  bears  or  boxers. 
Or,  hoping  to  hear  a  good  play,  we  find  the  entertain- 
ment offered  consists  of  pure  spectacle,  "  inexplicable 
dumbshow  and  noise  " — 

"Whole  fleets  of  ships  in  long  procession  pass, 
And  captive  ivory  follows  captive  brass."     (C.) 

A   milk-white  elephant    or   a    camelopard    is    con- 
sidered more  than  a  substitute  for  character,  incident, 


88  HORA  CE. 

or  wit.  And  if  an  actor  presents  himself  in  a  dress  of 
unusual  splendour,  the  house  is  in  ecstasies,  and  a 
roar  of  applause,  loud  as  a  tempest  in  the  Garganian 
forest,  or  as  the  surges  on  the  Tuscan  strand,  makes  the 
velarium  vibrate  above  their  heads.  Human  nature  is 
perpetually  repeating  itself.  So  when  Pope  is  para- 
phrasing Horace,  he  has  no  occasion  to  alter  the  facts, 
which  were  the  same  in  his  pseudo,  as  in  the  real, 
Augustan  age,  but  only  to  modernise  the  names  : — 

"  Loud  as  the  waves  on  Orcas'  stormy  steep 
Howl  to  the  roarings  of  the  Northern  deep, 
Such  is  the  shout,  the  long-applauding  note, 
At  Quin's  high  plume,  or  Oldfield's  petticoat. 
Booth  enters — hark  !  the  universal  peal. 
'  But  has  he  spoken  V     Not  a  syllable. 
'  "What  shook  the  stage,  and  made  the  people  stare  V 
1  Cato's  long  wig,  ilowered  gown,  and  lackered  chair.' " 

"We  dine  out.  Maecenas  is  of  the  party,  and  comes 
in  leaning  heavily  on  the  two  umbrae,  (guests  of  his  own 
inviting)  whom  he  has  brought  with  him, — habitues 
of  what  Augustus  called  his  "  parasitical  table,"  who 
make  talk  and  find  buffoonery  for  him.  He  is  out  of 
spirits  to-day,  and  more  reserved  than  usual,  for  a 
messenger  has  just  come  in  with  bad  news  from  Spain, 
or  he  has  heard  of  a  conspiracy  against  Augustus, 
which  must  be  crushed  before  it  grows  more  danger- 
ous. Varius  is  there,  and  being  a  writer  of  tragedies, 
keeps  up,  as  your  tragic  author  is  sure  to  do,  a  ceaseless 
fire  of  nuns  and  nleasantrv  At  these  youns  Sybaris 
smiles  faintly,  for  his  thoughts  are  away  with  his  lady- 
love, the  too  fascinating  Lydia.     Horace — who,  from 


LIFE  IN  ROME.  89 

the  other  side  of  the  table,  with  an  amused  smile  in 
his  eyes,  watches  him,  as  he  "  sighs  like  furnace,"  while 
Nesera,  to  the  accompaniment  of  her  lyre,  sings  one  of 
Sappho's  most  passionate  odes — whispers  something 
in  the  ear  of  the  brilliant  vocalist,  which  visibly  pro- 
vokes a  witty  repartee,  with  a  special  sting  in  it  for 
Horace  himself,  at  which  the  little  man  winces — for 
have  there  not  been  certain  love-passages  of  old  be- 
tween Xesera  and  himself?  The  wine  circulates  freely. 
Maecenas  warms,  and  drops,  with  the  deliberation  of 
a  rich  sonorous  voice,  now  some  sharp  sarcasm, 
now  some  aphorism  heavy  with  meaning,  which 
sticks  to  the  memory,  like  a  saying  of  Talleyrand's. 
His  umbrce,  who  have  put  but  little  of  allaying 
Tiber  in  their  cups,  grow  boisterous  and  abusive,  and 
having  insulted  nearly  everybody  at  the  table  by- 
coarse  personal  banter,  the  party  breaks  up,  and  we 
are  glad  to  get  out  with  flushed  cheeks  and  dizzy 
head  into  the  cool  air  of  an  early  summer  night — 
all  the  more,  that  for  the  last  half-hour  young  Piso 
at  our  elbow  has  been  importuning  us  with  whispered 
specimens  of  his  very  rickety  elegiacs,  and  trying 
to  settle  an  early  appointment  for  us  to  hear  him 
read  the  first  six  books  of  the  great  Epic  Avith  which 
he  means  to  electrify  the  literary  circles.  "We  reach 
the  Fabrician  bridge,  meditating  as  we  go  the  repar- 
tees with  which  we  might  have  turned  the  tables  on 
those  scurrilous  followers  of  the  great  man,  but  did 
not.  Suddenly  we  run  up  against  a  gentleman,  who, 
raising  his  cloak  over  his  head,  is  on  the  point  of 
jumping  into  the  Tiber.     "We  seize  him  by  his  mantle, 


90  EORA  CE. 

and  discover  in  the  intended  suicide  an  old  acquaint- 
ance, equally  well  known  to  the  Jews  and  the  bric-a- 
brac  shops,  whose  tastes  for  speculation  and  articles  of 
veriu  have  first  brought  him  to  the  money-lenders, 
next  to  the  dogs,  and  finally  to  the  brink  of  the 
yellow  Tiber.  We  give  Mm  all  the  sesterces  we  have 
about  us,  along  with  a  few  sustaining  aphorisms  from 
our  commonplace  book  upon  the  folly,  if  not  the 
wickedness,  of  suicide,  and  see  him  safely  home.  When 
we  next  encounter  the  decayed  virtuoso,  he  has  grown 
a  beard  (very  badly  kept),  and  set  up  as  a  philosopher 
of  the  hyper-virtuous  Jaques  school.  Of  course  he 
lectures  us  upon  every  vice  which  we  have  not,  and 
every  little  frailty  which  we  have,  with  a  pointed  as- 
perity that  upsets  our  temper  for  the  day,  and  causes 
us  long  afterwards  to  bewail  the  evil  hour  in  which 
we  rescued  such  an  ill-conditioned  grumbler  from  the 
kindly  waters  of  the  river. 

These  hints  of  life  and  manners,  all  drawn  from  the 
pages  of  Horace,  might  be  infinitely  extended,  and  a 
ramble  in  the  streets  of  Eome  in  the  present  day  is 
consequently  fuller  of  vivid  interest  to  a  man  who  has 
these  pages  at  his  fingers'  ends  than  it  can  possibly  be 
to  any  other  person.  Horace  is  so  associated  witli  all 
the  localities,  that  one  would  think  it  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world  to  come  upon  him  at  any  turning. 
His  old  familiar  haunts  rise  up  about  us  out  of  the 
dust  of  centuries.  We  see  a  short  thick-set  man  come 
sauntering  along,  "more  fat  than  bard  beseems."  As 
he  passes,  lost  in  reverie,  many  turn  round  and  look 
at  him.      Some  point  him  out  to  their  companions, 


HORACE'S  BORE.  91 

and  by  what  they  say,  we  learn  that  this  is  Horace, 
the  favourite  of  Maecenas,  the  frequent  visitor  at  the 
unpretending  palace  of  Augustus,  the  self-made  man 
and  famous  poet.  He  is  still  within  sight,  when  his 
progress  is  arrested.  He  is  in  the  hands  of  a  bore  of 
the  first  magnitude.  But  what  ensued,  let  us  hear 
from  his  own  lips  (Satires,  I.   9)  : — 

The  Bore. 

It  chanced  that  I,  the  other  day, 

Was  sauntering  up  the  Sacred  Way, 

And  musing,  as  my  habit  is, 

Some  trivial  random  fantasies, 

That  for  the  time  absorbed  me  quite, 

When  there  comes  running  up  a  wight, 

Whom  only  by  his  name  I  knew  ; 

"  Ha  !  my  dear  fellow,  how  d'ye  do  ? " 

Grasping  my  hand,  he  shouted.     "  Why, 

As  times  go,  pretty  well,"  said  I ; 

"  And  you,  I  trust,  can  say  the  same." 

But  after  me  as  still  he  came 

"Sir,  is  there  anything,"  I  cried, 

"  You  want  of  me  ? "     "  Oh,"  he  replied, 

"  I'm  just  the  man  you  ought  to  know; — • 

A  scholar,  author  !  "     "  Is  it  so  ? 

For  this  I'll  like  you  all  the  more  ! " 

Then,  writhing  to  evade  the  bore, 

I  quicken  now  my  pace,  now  stop, 

And  in  my  servant's  ear  let  drop 

Some  words,  and  all  the  while  I  feel 

Bathed  in  cold  sweat  from  head  to  heeL 

"Oh,  for  a  touch,"  I  moaned,  in  pain, 

"  Bolanus,  of  thy  madcap  vein, 

To  put  this  incubus  to  rout !  " 

As  he  went  chattering  on  about 


92  HORACE. 

Whatever  he  descries  or  meets, 

The  crowds,  the  beauty  of  the  streets, 

The  city's  growth,  its  splendour,  size, 

"  You're  dying  to  he  off,"  he  cries  ; 

For  all  the  while  I'd  been  stock  dumb. 

"I've  seen  it  this  half-hour.     But  come, 

Let's  clearly  understand  each  other ; 

It's  no  use  making  all  this  pother. 

My  mind's  made  up,  to  stick  by  you : 

So  where  you  go,  there  I  go,  too." 

"Don't  put  yourself,"  I  answered,  "pray, 

So  very  far  out  of  your  way. 

I'm  on  the  road  to  see  a  friend, 

Whom  you  don't  know,  that's  near  his  end, 

Away  beyond  the  liber  far, 

Close  by  where  Caesar's  gardens  are." 

"  I've  nothing  in  the  world  to  do, 

And  what's  a  paltry  mile  or  two? 

I  like  it,  so  I'll  follow  you  !  " 

Down  dropped  my  ears  on  hearing  this, 

Just  like  a  vicious  jackass's, 

That's  loaded  heavier  than  he  likes ; 

But  off  anew  my  torment  strikes. 

"  If  well  I  know  myself,  you'll  end 

With  making  of  me  more  a  friend 

Than  Viscus,  ay,  or  Varius ;  for 

Of  verses  who  can  run  off  more, 

Or  run  them  off  at  such  a  pace  ? 

Who  dance  with  such  distinguished  grace* 

And  as  for  singing,  zounds  !  "  said  he, 

"  Hermogenes  might  envy  me  !  " 

Here  was  an  opening  to  break  in. 

"Have  you  a  mother,  father,  kin, 

To  whom  your  life  is  precious  ? "     "None;  - 

I've  closed  the  eyes  of  every  one." 

Oh,  happy  they,  I  inly  groan. 

Now  I  am  left,  and  I  alone. 


HORACE'S  BORE.  93 

Quick,  quick,  despatch  me  where  I  stand; 
Now  is  the  direful  doom  at  hand, 
Which  erst  the  Sabine  beldam  old, 
Shaking  her  macric  urn,  foretold 
In  days  when  I  was  yet  a  boy : 
"  Him  shall  no  poisons  fell  destroy, 
Nor  hostile  sword  in  shock  of  war, 
Nor  gout,  nor  colic,  nor  catarrh. 
In  fulness  of  the  time  his  thread 
Shall  by  a  prate-apace  be  shred  ; 
So  let  him,  when  he's  twenty-one, 
If  he  be  wise,  all  babblers  shun." 

Now  we  were  close  to  Vesta's  fane, 
'Twas  hard  on  ten,  and  he,  my  bane, 
Was  bound  to  answer  to  his  bail, 
Or  lose  his  cause  if  he  should  fail. 
"  Do,  if  you  love  me,  step  aside 
One  moment  with  me  here !"  he  cried. 
"  Upon  my  life,  indeed,  I  can't, 
Of  law  I'm  wholly  ignorant ; 
And  you  know  where  I'm  hurrying  to." 
"  I'm  fairly  puzzled  what  to  do. 
Give  you  up,  or  my  cause  ?"     "  Oh,  me, 
Me,  by  all  means  !"     "I  won't  !"  quoth  he  ; 
And  stalks  on,  holding  by  me  tight. 
As  with  your  conqueror  to  fight 
Is  hard,  I  follow.     "  How," — anon 
He  rambles  off, — "  how  get  you  on, 
You  and  Maecenas  ?     To  so  few 
He  keeps  himself.     So  clever,  too  ! 
No  man  more  dexterous  to  seize 
And  use  his  opportunities. 
Just  introduce  me,  and  you'll  see, 
We'd  pull  together  famously ; 
And,  hang  me  then,  if,  with  my  backing, 
You  don't  send  all  your  rivals  packing  !" 


94  HORA  CE. 

"  Things  in  that  quarter,  sir,  proceed 

In  very  different  style,  indeed. 

No  house  more  free  from  all  that's  base, 

In  none  cabals  more  out  of  place. 

It  hurts  me  not  if  others  be 

More  rich,  or  better  read  than  me. 

Each  has  his  place  ! "    "  Amazing  tact ! 

Scarce  credible  ! "    "  But  'tis  the  fact." 

"  You  quicken  my  desire  to  get 

An  introduction  to  his  set." 

"  With  merit  such  as  yours,  you  need 

But  wish  it,  and  you  must  succeed. 

He's  to  be  won,  and  that  is  why 

Of  strangers  he's  so  very*shy." 

"  I'll  spare  no  pains,  no  arts,  no  shifts  \ 

His  servants  I'll  corrupt  with  gifts". 

To-day  though  driven  from  his  gate, 

What  matter  ?  I  will  lie  in  wait, 

To  catch  some  lucky  chance ;  I'll  meet 

Or  overtake  him  in  the  street ; 

I'll  haunt  him  like  his  shadow.     Nought 

In  life  without  much  toil  is  bought." 

Just  at  this  moment  who  but  my 
Dear  friend  Aristius  should  come  by  ? 
My  rattlebrain  right  well  he  knew. 
We  stop.     "  Whence,  friends,  and  whither  to'?" 
He  asks  and  answers.     Whilst  we  ran 
The  usual  courtesies,  I  began 
To  pluck  him  by  the  sleeve,  to  pinch 
His  arms,  that  feel  but  will  not  flinch, 
By  nods  and  winks  most  plain  to  see 
Imploring  him  to  rescue  me. 
He,  wickedly  obtuse  the  while, 
Meets  all  my  signals  with  a  smile. 
I,  choked  with  rage,  said,  "  Was  there  not 
Some  business,  I've  forgotten  what, 


COMPLETION   OF   THE  SATIRES.  91 

You  mentioned,  that  you  wished  with  me 

To  talk  about,  and  privately  ?" 

"  Oh,  I  remember  !  Never  mind  ! 

Some  more  convenient  time  I'll  find. 

The  Thirtieth  Sabbath  this  !     Would  you 

Affront  the  circumcised  Jew  ?" 

"  Religious  scruples  I  have  none." 

"  Ah,  but  I  have.     I  am  but  one 

Of  the  canaille — a  feeble  brother. 

Your  pardon.     Some  fine  day  or  other 

I'll  tell  you  what  it  was."     Oh,  day 

Of  woful  doom  to  me  !     Away 

The  rascal  bolted  like  an  arrow, 

And  left  me  underneath  the  harrow ; 

When,  by  the  rarest  luck,  we  ran 

At  the  next  turn  against  the  man, 

Who  had  the  lawsuit  with  my  bore. 

"  Ha,  knave  !"  he  cried,  with  loud  uproar, 

lt  Where  are  you  off  to  1     Will  you  here 

Stand  witness  ?"  I  present  my  ear. 

To  court  he  hustles  him  along  ; 

High  words  are  bandied,  high  and  strong. 

A  mob  collects,  the  fray  to  see  : 

So  did  Apollo  rescue  me. 

The  Satires  appear  to  have  been  completed  when 
Horace  was  about  thirty-five  years  old,  and  published 
collectively,  B.C.  29.  By  this  time  his  position  in 
society  was  well  assured.  He  numbered  among  his 
friends,  as  we  have  seen,  the  most  eminent  men  in 
Rome, — 

"  Chiefs  out  of  war,  and  statesmen  out  of  place  " — 

men  who  were  not  merely  ripe  scholars,  but  who  had 
borne  and  were  bearing  a  leading  part  in  the  great 


V6  IIORA  CE. 

actions  of  that  memorable  epoch.  Among  such  men 
he  would  be  most  at  home,  for  there  his  wit,  his 
shrewdness,  his  genial  spirits,  and  high  breeding  would 
be  best  appreciated.  But  his  own  keen  relish  of 
life,  and  his  delight  in  watching  the  lights  and 
shades  of  human  character,  took  him  into  that  wider 
circle  where  witty  and  notable  men  are  always 
eagerly  sought  after  to  grace  the  feasts  or  enliven 
the  heavy  splendour  of  the  rich  and  the  unlettered. 
He  was  still  young,  and  happy  in  the  animal  spirits 
which  make  the  exhausting  life  of  a  luxurious  capital 
endurable  even  in  spite  of  its  pleasures.  What  Victor 
Hugo  calls 

"  Le  banquet  des  amis,  et  quelquefois  les  soirs, 
Le  baiser  jeune  et  frais  d'une  blanche  aux  yeux  noirs," 

never  quite  lost  their  charm  for  him  ;  but  during  this 
period  they  must  often  have  tempted  him  into  the 
elaborate  dinners,  the  late  hours,  and  the  high-strung 
excitement,  which  made  a  retreat  to  the  keen  air  and 
plain  diet  of  his  Sabine  home  scarcely  less  necessary 
for  his  body's  than  it  was  for  his  spirit's  health.  For, 
much  as  he  prized  moderation  in  all  things,  and 
extolled  "the  mirth  that  after  no  repenting  draws," 
good  wine,  good  company,  and  fair  and  witty  women 
would  be  sure  to  work  their  spell  on  a  temperament 
so  bright  and  sympathetic,  and  to  quicken  his  spirits 
into  a  brilliancy  and  force,  dazzling  for  the  hour, 
but  to  be  paid  for  next  day  in  headache  and  de- 
pression. 

Uc  was  all  the  mure  likely  to  sutler  in  this  way 


PLAIN  LIVING  AND   HIGH  THINKING.         97 

from  tlie  very  fact  that,  as  a  rule,  he  was  simple  and 
frugal  in  his  tastes  and  habits.  We  have  seen  him 
(p.  GO),  in  the  early  days  of  his  stay  in  Home,  at  his 
"  plain  meal  of  pancakes,  pulse,  and  pease,"  served  on 
homely  earthenware.  At  his  farm,  again,  beans  and 
bacon  (p.  80)  form  his  staple  dish.  True  to  the 
old  Roman  taste,  he  was  a  great  vegetarian,  and 
in  his  charming  ode,  written  for  the  opening  of  the 
temple  of  Apollo  erected  by  Augustus  on  Mount  Pala- 
tine (b.c.  28),  he  thinks  it  not  out  of  place  to  mingle 
with  his  prayer  for  poetic  power  an  entreaty  that  he 
may  never  be  without  wholesome  vegetables  and  fruit. 

"  Let  olives,  endive,  mallows  light, 

Be  all  my  fare  ;  and  health 
Give  thou,  Apollo,  so  I  might 

Enjoy  my  present  wealth  ! 
Give  me  but  these,  I  ask  no  more, 

These,  and  a  mind  entire — 
An  old  age,  not  unhonoured,  nor 

Unsolaced  by  the  lyre  ! " 

Maecenas  himself  is  promised  (Odes,  III.  28),  if  he  will 
visit  the  poet  at  the  Sabine  farm,  "  simple  dinners 
neatly  dressed  ;"  and  when  Horace  invites  down  his 
friend  Torquatus  (Epistles,  II.  5),  he  does  it  on  the 
footing  that  this  wealthy  lawyer  shall  be  content  to 
put  up  with  plain  vegetables  and  homely  crockery 
(modica  olus  omne  patella).  The  wine,  he  promises, 
shall  be  good,  though  not  of  any  of  the  crack  growths. 
If  Torquatus  wants  better,  he  must  send  it  down  him- 
self. The  appointments  of  the  table,  too,  though  of 
the  simplest  kind,  shall  be  admirably  kept — 

A.  C.  Vol.  VI.  G 


98  HORA  CE. 

"  The  coverlets  ol  laultless  slieen, 
The  napkins  scrupulously  clean, 
Your  cup  and  salver  such  that  they 
Unto  yourself  yourself  display." 

Table-service  neat  to  a  nicety  was  obviously  a  great 
point  with  Horace.  "What  plate  he  had  was  made  to 
look  its  best.  " Ridet  argento  dormis" — "  My  plate, 
newly-burnished,  enlivens  my  rooms  " — is  one  of  the 
attractions  held  out  in  his  invitation  to  the  fair 
Phyllis  to  grace  his  table  on  Maecenas's  birthday 
(Odes,  IV.  11).  And  we.  may  be  very  sure  that  his 
little  dinners  were  served  and  waited  on  with  the 
studied  care  and  quiet  finish  of  a  refined  simplicity. 
His  rule  on  these  matters  is  indicated  by  himself 
(Satires,  II.  2)  :— 

"  The  proper  thing  is  to  be  cleanly  and  nice, 
And  yet  so  as  not  to  be  over  precise  ; 
To  neither  be  constantly  scolding  your  slaves, 
Like  that  old  prig  Albutus,  as  losels  and  knaves, 
Nor,  like  Nsevius,  in  such  things  who's  rather  too  easy, 
To  the  guests  at  your  board  present  water  that's  greasy." 

To  a  man  of  these  simple  tastes  the  elaborate  ban- 
quets, borrowed  from  the  Asiatic  Greeks,  which  were 
then  in  fashion,  must  have  been  intolerable.  lie  has 
introduced  us  to  one  of  them  in  describing  a  dinner- 
party of  nine  given  by  one  Nasidienus,  a  wealthy 
snob,  to  Maecenas  and  others  of  Horace's  friends.  The 
dinner  breaks  down  in  a  very  amusing  way,  between 
the  giver's  love  of  display  and  his  parsimony,  which 
prompted  him,  on  the  one  hand,  to  present  his  guests 


0FELLU3   ON  APW1ANISM.  99 

with  the  fashionable  dainties,  but,  on  the  other,  would 
not  let  him  pay  a  price  sufficient  to  secure  their  being 
good.  The  first  course  consists  of  a  Lucanian  wild 
boar,  served  with  a  garnish  of  turnips,  radishes,  and  let- 
tuce, in  a  sauce  of  anchovy-brine  and  wine-lees.  Next 
comes  an  incongruous  medley  of  dishes,  including  one 

"  Of  sparrows'  gall  and  turbots'  liver, 
At  the  mere  thought  of  which  I  shiver." 

A  lamprey  succeeds,  "  floating  vast  and  free,  by  shrimps 
surrounded  in  a  sea  of  sauce,"  and  this  is  followed 
up  by  a  crane  soused  in  salt  and  flour,  the  liver  of  a 
snow-white  goose  fattened  on  figs,  leverets'  shoulders, 
and  roasted  blackbirds.  This  menu  is  clearly  meant 
for  a  caricature,  but  it  was  a  caricature  of  a  prevailing 
folly,  which  had  probably  cost  the  poet  many  an  indi- 
gestion. 

Against  this  folly,  and  the  ruin  to  health  and  purse 
which  it  entailed,  some  of  his  most  vigorous  satire  is 
directed.  It  furnishes  the  themes  of  the  second  and 
fourth  Satires  of  the  Second  Book,  both  of  which, 
with  slight  modifications,  might  with  equal  truth  be 
addressed  to  the  dinner-givers  and  diners-out  of  our 
own  day.  In  the  former  of  these  the  speaker  is  the 
Apulian  yeoman  Ofellus,  who  undertakes  to  show 

"  What  the  virtue  consists  in,  and  why  it  is  great, 
To  live  on  a  little,  whatever  your  state." 

Before  entering  on  his  task,  however,  he  insists  that 
his  hearers  shall  cut  themselves  adrift  from  their 
luxuries,  and  come  to  him  fasting,  and  with  appetites 


LCO  HORACE. 

whetted  by  a  sharp  run  with  the  hounds,  a  stiff  bout 
at  tennis,  or  some  other  vigorous  gymnastics  ; — 

"  And  when  the  hard  work  has  your  squeamishness  routed, 
When  you're  parched  up  with  thirst,  and  your  hunger's 

undoubted, 
Then  spurn  simple  food  if  you  can,  or  plain  wine, 
Which  no  honied  gums  from  Hymettus  refine." 

His  homily  then  proceeds  in  terms  which  would  not 
be  out  of  place  if  addressed  to  a  gourmet  of  modern 
London  or  Paris  : — 

"  When  your  butler's  away,  and  the  weather's  so  bad 

That  there  is  not  a  morsel  of  fish  to  be  had, 

A  crust  with  some  salt  will  soothe  not  amiss 

The  ravening  stomach.     You  ask,  how  is  this  ? 

Because  for  delight,  at  the  best,  you  must  look 

To  yourself,  and  not  to  your  wealth  or  your  cook  * 

Work  till  you  perspire.     Of  all  sauces  'tis  best. 

The  man  that's  with  over-indulgence  oppressed, 

White-livered  and  pursy,  can  relish  no  dish, 

Be  it  ortolans,  oysters,  or  finest  of  fish. 

Still  I  scarcely  can  hope,  if  before  you  there  were 

A  peacock  and  capon,  you  would  not  prefer 

With  the  peacock  to  tickle  your  palate,  you're  so 

Completely  the  dupes  of  mere  semblance  and  show. 

For  to  buy  the  rare  bird  only  gold  will  avail, 

And  he  makes  a  grand  show  with  his  fine  painted  tail. 

*  "  Pour  l'amour  de  Dieu,  mi  sou  pour  acheter  un  petit  pain. 
/'ai  si  faim  !"  "  Comment !"  responded  the  cloyed  sensualist, 
in  search  of  an  appetite,  who  was  thus  accosted  ;  "tu  as  faim, 
petit  drole  !  Tu  es  hien  heureux  !"  The  readers  of  Pope  will 
also  remember  his  lines  on  the  man  who 

"  Called  '  happy  dog  '  the  beggar  at  his  door, 
And  envied  thirst  and  hunger  to  the  poor." 


OFELLUS  OX  APIC1ANISM.  101 

As  if  this  had  to  do  with  the  matter  the  least ! 

Can  you  make  of  the  feathers  you  prize  so  a  feast  ? 

And,  when  the  bird's  cooked,  what  becomes  of  its  splen- 
dour } 

Is  his  flesh  than  the  capon's  more  juicy  or  tender  ? 

Mere  appearance,  not  substance,  then,  clearly  it  is, 

"Which  bamboozles  your  judgment.  So  much,  then,  for 
this." 

Don't  talk  to  me  of  taste,  Ofellus  continues — 

"  "Will  it  give  you  a  notion 
If  this  pike  in  the  Tiber  was  caught,  or  the  ocean  ? 
If  it  used  'twixt  the  bridges  to  glide  and  to  quiver, 
Or  was  tossed  to  and  fro  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  ?" 

Just  as  our  epicures  profess  to  distinguish  by  flavour  a 
salmon  fresh  run  from  the  sea  from  one  that  has  been 
degenerating  for  four-and-twenty  hours  in  the  fresh 
water  of  the  river — with  this  difference,  however, 
that,  unlike  the  salmon  with  us,  the  above-bridge  pike 
wras  considered  at  Rome  to  he  more  delicate  than  his 
sea-bred  and  leaner  brother. 

Ofellus  next  proceeds  to  ridicule  the  taste  which 
prizes  what  is  set  before  it  for  mere  size  or  rarity  or 
cost.  It  is  this,  he  contends,  and  not  any  excellence 
in  the  things  themselves,  which  makes  people  load 
their  tables  with  the  sturgeon  or  the  stork.  Fashion, 
not  flavour,  prescribes  the  rule ;  indeed,  the  more 
perverted  her  ways,  the  more  sure  they  are  to  be 
followed. 

"  So  were  any  one  now  to  assure  us  a  treat 

In  cormorants  roasted,  as  tender  and  sweet, 

The  young  men  of  Rome  are  so  prone  to  what's  wrong, 

They'd  eat  cormorants  all  to  a  man,  before  long." 


102  HORACE. 

But,  continues  Ofellus,  though  T  would  have  you 
frugal,  I  would  not  have  you  mean — 

"  One  vicious  extreme  it  is  idle  to  shun, 
If  into  its  opposite  straightway  you  run  ;" 

illustrating  his  proposition  by  one  of  those  graphic 
sketches  which  give  a  distinctive  life  to  Horace's 
Satires. 

"  There  is  Avidienus,  to  whom,  like  a  burr, 

Sticks  the  name  he  was  righteously  dubbed  by,  of  '  Cur,' 

Eats  beechmast  and  olives  live  years  old,  at  least, 

And  even  when  he's  robed  all  in  white  for  a  feast 

On  his  marriage  or  birth  day,  or  some  other  very 

High  festival  day,  when  one  likes  to  be  merry, 

What  wine  from  the  chill  of  his  cellar  emerges — 

'Tis  a  drop  at  the  best — has  the  flavour  of  verjuice  ; 

While  from  a  huge  cruet  his  own  sparing  hand 

On  his  coleworts  drops  oil  which  no  mortal  can  stand, 

So  utterly  loathsome  and  rancid  in  smell,  it 

Defies  his  stale  vinegar  even  to  quell  it." 

Let  what  you  have  be  simple,  the  best  of  its  kind, 
whatever  that  may  be,  and  served  in  the  best  style. 
And  now  learn,  continues  the  rustic  sage, 

"  In  what  way  and  how  greatly  you'll  gain 
By  using  a  diet  both  sparing  and  plain. 
First,  your  health  will  be  good  ;  for  you  readily  can 
Believe  how  much  mischief  is  done  to  a  man 
By  a  great  mass  of  dishes, — remembering  that 
Plain  fare  of  old  times,  and  how  lightly  it  sat. 
But  the  moment  you  mingle  up  boiled  with  roast  meat, 
And  shellfish  with  thrushes,  what  tasted  so  sweet 
Will  be  turned  into  bile,  and  ferment,  not  digest,  in 
Your  stomach  exciting  a  tumult  intestine. 


OFELLUS  CONTINUED.  103 

Mark,  from  a  bewildering  dinner  how  pale 

Every  man  rises  up  !     Nor  is  this  all  they  ail, 

For  the  body,  weighed  down  by  its  last  night's  excesses, 

To  its  own  wretched  level  the  mind,  too,  depresses, 

And  to  earth  chains  that  spark  of  the  essence  divine  ; 

While  he,  that's  content  on  plain  viands  to  dine, 

Sleeps  off  his  fatigues  without  effort,  then  gay 

As  a  lark  rises  up  to  the  tasks  of  the  day. 

Yet  he  on  occasion  will  find  himself  able 

To  enjoy  without  hurt  a  more  liberal  table, 

Say,  on  festival  days,  that  come  round  with  the  year, 

Or  when  his  strength's  low,  and  cries  out  for  good  cheer, 

Or  when,  as  years  gather,  his  age  must  be  nursed 

With  more  delicate  care  than  he  wanted  at  first. 

But  for  you,  when  ill  health  or  old  age  shall  befall, 

Where's  the  luxury  left,  the  relief  within  call, 

Which  has  not  been  forestalled  in  the  days  of  your  prime, 

When  you  scoffed,  in  your  strength,  at  the  inroads   of 

time  ? 
" '  Keep  your  boar  till  it's  rank  ! '  said  our  sires  ;  which 

arose, 
I  am  confident,  not  from  their  having  no  nose, 
But  more  from  the  notion  that  some  of  their  best 
Should  be  kept  in  reserve  for  the  chance  of  a  guest : 
And  though,  ere  he  came,  it  grew  stale  on  the  shelf, 
This  was  better  than  eating  all  up  by  one's  self. 
Oh,  would  I  had  only  on  earth  found  a  place 
In  the  days  of  that  noble  heroic  old  race  !" 

So  much  as  a  question  of  mere  health  and  good 
feeling.  But  now  our  moralist  appeals  to  highe? 
considerations  : — 

"  Do  you  set  any  store  by  good  name,  which  we  find 
Is  more  welcome  than  song  to  the  ears  of  mankind  ? 
Magnificent  turbot,  plate  richly  embossed, 
Will  bring  infinite  shame  with  an  infinite  cost. 


104  HORACE. 

Add  kinsmen  and  neighbours  all  furious,  your  owd 
Disgust  with  yourself,  when  you  find  yourself  groan 
For  death,  which  has  shut  itself  off  from  your  hope, 
With  not  even  a  sou  left  to  buy  you  a  rope. 

"  'Most  excellent  doctrine  !'  you  answer,  'and  would, 
For  people  like  Trausius,  be  all  very  good  ; 
But  I  have  great  wealth,  and  an  income  that  brings 
In  enough  to  provide  for  the  wants  of  three  kings.' 
But  is  this  any  reason  y  _>u  hrouII  net  ipply 
Your  superfluous  wealth  to  ends  nobler,  more  high  ? 
You  so  rich,  why  should  any  good  honest  man  lack  1 
Our  temples,  why  should  they  be  tumbling  to  wrack  ? 
Wretch,  of  all  this  great  heap  have  you  nothing  to  spare 
For  our  dear  native  land  }     Or  why  should  you  dare 
To  think  that  misfortune  will  never  o'ertake  you  ? 
Oh,  then,  what  a  butt  would  vour  enemies  make  you ! 

7  7  »/  t> 

Who  will  best  meet  reverses  ?     The  man  who,  you  find, 

Has  by  luxuries  pampered  both  body  and  mind  ? 

Or  he  who,  contented  with  little,  and  still 

Looking  on  to  the  future,  and  fearful  of  ill, 

Long,  long  ere  a  murmur  is  heard  from  afar, 

In  peace  has  laid  up  the  munitions  of  war  ?" 

Alas  for  the  wisdom  of  Ofellus  the  sacje  !  Nineteen 
centuries  have  come  and  gone,  and  the  spectacle  is 
still  before  us  of  the  same  selfishness,  extravagance, 
and  folly,  which  he  rebuked  so  well  and  so  vainly, 
but  pushed  to  even  greater  excess,  and  more  widely 
diffused,  enervating  the  frames  and  ruining  the  for- 
tunes of  one  great  section  of  society,  and  helping  to 
inspire  another  section,  and  that  a  dangerous  one, 
with  angry  disgust  at  the  hideous  contrast  between 
the  opposite  extremes  of  wretchedness  and  luxury 
which  everywhere  meets  the  eye  in  the  great  cities 
of  the  civilised   world. 

In  the  fourth  Satire  of  the  Second  Book,  Horace 


CATIUS  OX  THE  CUISINE.  105 

ridicules,  in  a  vein  of  exquisite  irony,  the  gourmets  of 
his  day,  who  made  a  philosophy  of  flavours,  with 
whom  sauces  were  a  science,  and  who  had  condensed 
into  aphorisms  the  merits  of  the  poultry,  game,  or  fish 
of  the  different  and  often  distant  regions  from  which 
they  were  brought  to  Borne.  Catius  has  been  listen- 
ing to  a  dissertation  by  some  Brillat-Savarin  of  this 
class,  and  is  hurrying  home  to  commit  to  his  tablets 
the  precepts  by  which  he  professes  himself  to  have  been 
immensely  struck,  when  he  is  met  by  Horace,  and  pre- 
vailed upon  to  repeat  some  of  them  in' the  very  words 
of  this  philosopher  of  the  dinner-table.  Exceedingly 
curious  they  are,  throwing  no  small  light  both  upon 
the  materials  of  the  Roman  cuisine  and  upon  the 
treatment  by  the  Romans  of  their  wines.  Being 
delivered,  moreover,  with  the  epigrammatic  precision 
of  philosophical  axioms,  their  effect  is  infinitely  amus- 
ing.    Thus  : — 


lO" 


"  Honey  Aufidius  mixed  with  strong 
Falernian  ;  he  was  very  wrong." 

"  The  flesh  of  kid  is  rarelv  fine, 
That  has  been  chiefly  fed  on  vine." 

"  To  meadow  mushrooms  give  the  prize, 
And  trust  no  others,  if  you're  wise." 

"  Till  I  had  the  example  shown, 
The  art  was  utterly  unknown 
Of  telling,  when  you  taste  a  dish, 
The  age  and  kind  of  bird  or  fish." 

Horace  professes  to  be  enraptured  at  the  depth  of 
sagacity  and  beauty  of  expression  in  what  he  hears, 
and  exclaims, — ■ 


10G  HORACE. 

"  Oh,  learned  Catius,  prithee,  by 
Our  friendship,  by  the  gods  on  high, 
Take  me  along  with  you,  to  hear 
Such  wisdom,  be  it  far  or  near! 
For  though  you  tell  me  all — in  fact, 
Your  memory  is  most  exact — 
Still  there  must  be  some  grace  of  speech, 
Which  no  interpreter  can  reach. 
The  look,  too,  of  the  man,  the  mien  ! 
Which  you,  what  fortune  !  having  seen, 
May  for  that  very  reason  deem 
Of  no  account  ;  but  to  the  stream, 
Even  at  its  very  fountain-head, 
I  fain  would  have  my  footsteps  led, 
That,  stooping,  I  may  drink  my  fill, 
Where  such  life-giving  saws  distil." 

Manifestly  the  poet  was  no  gastronome,  or  he  would 
not  have  dealt  thus  sarcastically  with  matters  so 
solemn  and  serious  as  the  gusts,  and  flavours,  and 
"  sacred  rage  "  of  a  highly-educated  appetite.  At 
the  same  time,  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  him  to 
have  been  insensible  to  the  attractions  of  the  "  haute 
cuisine"  as  developed  by  the  genius  of  the  Vattel  or 
Erancatelli  of  Maecenas,  and  others  of  his  wealthy 
friends.  Indeed,  he  appears  to  have  been  prone, 
rather  than  otherwise,  to  attack  these  with  a  relish, 
which  his  feeble  digestion  had  frequent  reason  to 
repent.  His  servant  Davus  more  than  hints  as  much 
in  the  passage  above  quoted  (p.  83) ;  ami  the  consci- 
ousness of  his  own -frailty  may  have  given  additional 
vigour  to  his  assaults  on  the  ever-increasing  indulgence 
in  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  which  he  saw  gaining 
ground  so  rapidly  around  him. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


HORACE  S   LOVE    POETRY. 


When  young,  Horace  threw  himself  ardently  into 
the  pleasures  of  youth ;  and  his  friends  being,  for  the 
most  part,  young  and  rich,  their  banquets  were  sure 
to  "h«  sumptuous,  and  carried  far  into  the  night.  Nor 
in  these  days  did  the  "  blanche  aux  yeux  noirs" 
whose  beauty  and  accomplishments  formed  the  crown- 
ing grace  of  most  bachelors'  parties,  fail  to  engage  a 
liberal  share  of  his  attention.  He  tells  us  as  much 
himself  (Epistles,  I.  14),  when  contrasting  to  the 
steward  of  his  farm  the  tastes  of  his  maturer  years 
with  the  habits  of  his  youth. 

"  He,  whom  fine  clothes  became,  and  glistering  hair, 
Whom  Cinara  welcomed,  that  rapacious  fair, 
As  well  you  know,  for  his  own  simple  sake, 
Who  on  from  noon  would  wine  in  bumpers  take, 
Now  quits  the  table  soon,  and  loves  to  dream 
And  drowse  upon  the  grass  beside  a  stream," 

adding,  with  a  sententious  brevity  which  it  is  hope- 
less to  imitate,  "  Nee  lusisse  pudet,  sed  non  incidere 
ludurri, — 


108  HORACE. 

"  Nor  blushes  that  of  sport  he  took  his  fill  ; 
He'd  blush,  indeed,  to  be  tomfooling  still." 

Again,  when  lamenting  how  little  the  rolling  years 
have  left  him  of  his  past  (Epistles,  II.  2),  his  regrets 
are  for  the  "  Venerem,  convivia,  ludum"  to  which  he 
no  longer  finds  himself  equal — 

"  Years  following  years  steal  something  every  day, 
Love,  feasting,  frolic,  fun,  they've  swept  away  ; " — 

and  to  the  first  of  these,  life  "  in  his  hot  youth  "  mani- 
festly owed  much  of  its  charm. 

To  beauty  he  would  appear  to  nave  been  always 
susceptible,  but  his  was  the  lightly-stirred  suscepti- 
bility which  is  an  affair  of  the  senses  rather  than  of 
the  soul.  "  There  is  in  truth,"  says  Rochefoucauld, 
"  only  one  kind  of  love  ;  but  there  are  a  thousand 
different  copies  of  it."  Horace,  so  far  at  least  as  we 
can  judge  from  his  poetry,  was  no  stranger  to  the 
spurious  form  of  the  passion,  but  his  whole  being  had 
never  been  penetrated  by  the  genuine  fire.  The  god- 
dess of  his  worship  is  not  Venus  Urania,  pale,  dreamy, 
spiritual,  but  Erycina  ridens,  quam  Jocus  circum  volai 
et  Oupido,  who  comes 

"  With  laughter  in  her  eyes,  and  Love 
And  Glee  around  her  flying." 

Accordingly,  of  all  those  infinitely  varied  chords  of 
deep  emotion  and  imaginative  tenderness,  of  which  oc- 
casional traces  are  to  be  found  in  the  literature  of  anti- 
quity, and  with  which  modern  poetry,  from  Dante  to 
Tennyson,  is  familiar,  no  hint  is  to  be  found  in  his 


HIS  LOVE-POETRY.  109 

pages.  His  deepest  feeling  is  at  best  but  a  ferment  of 
the  blood  ;  it  is  never  the  all-absorbing  devotion  of  the 
heart.  He  had  learned  by  his  own  experience  just 
enough  of  the  tender  passion  to  enable  him  to  write 
pretty  verses  about  it,  and  to  rally,  not  unsympatheti- 
cally,  such  of  his  friends  as  had  not  escaped  so  lightly 
from  the  flame.  Therefore  it  is  that,  as  has  been 
truly  said,  "  his  love-ditties  are,  as  it  were,  like  flowers, 
beautiful  in  form  and  rich  in  hues,  but  without  the 
scent  that  breathes  to  the  heart."  We  seek  in  them 
in  vain  for  the  tenderness,  the  negation  of  self,  the 
passion  and  the  pathos,  which  are  the  soul  of  all  true 
love-poetry. 

At  the  same  time,  Horace  had  a  subtle  appreciation 
of  the  beauty  and  grace,  the  sweetness  and  the  fasci- 
nation, of  womanhood.  Poet  as  he  was,  he  must  have 
delighted  to  contemplate  the  ideal  elevation  and  purity 
of  woman,  as  occasionally  depicted  in  the  poetry  of 
Greece,  and  of  which  he  could  scarcely  fail  to  have 
had  some  glimpses  in  real  life.  Nay,  he  paints 
(Odes,  III.  11)  the  devotion  of  Hypermnestra  for  her 
husband's  sake  "  magnificently  false  "  (splendide  men- 
dux)  to  the  promise  which,  with  her  sister  Danaids, 
she  had  given  to  her  father,  in  a  way  that  proves  he 
was  not  incapable  of  appreciating,  and  even  of  depict- 
ing, the  purer  and  higher  forms  of  female  worth.  Ent 
this  exquisite  portrait  stands  out  in  solitary  splendour 
among  the  Lydes  and  Lalages,  the  Myrtales,  Phrynes, 
and  Glyceras  of  his  other  poems.  These  ladies  were 
types  of  the  class  with  which,  probably,  he  was  most 
famdiar,    those    brilliant    and    accomplished    Jietairw, 


110  HORACE. 

generally  Greeks,  who  were  trained  up  in  slavery 
with  every  art  and  accomplishment  which  could 
heighten  their  beauty  or  lend  a  charm  to  their 
society.  Always  beautiful,  and  by  force  of  their 
very  position  framed  to  make  themselves  attractive, 
these  "  weeds  of  glorious  feature,"  naturally  enough, 
took  the  chief  place  in  the  regards  of  men  of  fortune, 
in  a  state  of  society  where  marriage  was  not  an  alfair 
of  the  heart  but  of  money  or  connection,  and  where 
the  wife  so  chosen  seems  to  have  been  at  pains  to 
make  herself  more  attractive  to  everybody  rather  than 
to  her  husband.  Here  and  there  these  Aspasias  made 
themselves  a  distinguished  position,  and  occupied  a 
place  with  their  protector  nearly  akin  to  that  of  wife. 
But  in  the  ordinary  way  their  reign  over  any  one  heart 
was  shortlived,  and  their  career,  though  splendid,  was 
brief, — a  youth  of  folly,  a  premature  old  age  of  squalor 
and  neglect.  Their  habits  were  luxurious  and  extrava- 
gant. In  dress  they  outvied  the  splendour,  not  insig- 
nificant, of  the  Roman  matrons ;  and  they  might  be 
seen  courting  the  admiration  of  the  wealthy  loungers 
of  Rome  by  dashing  along  the  Appian  Way  behind  a 
team  of  spirited  ponies  driven  by  themselves.  These 
tilings  were  often  paid  for  out  of  the  ruin  of  their 
admirers.  Their  society,  while  in  the  bloom  and  fresh- 
ness of  their  charms,  was  greatly  sought  after,  for  wit 
and  song  came  with  them  to  the  feast.  Even  Cicero, 
then  well  up  in  years,  finds  a  pleasant  excuse  (Fami- 
liar Letters,  IX.  2G)  for  enjoying  till  a  late  hour  the 
society  of  one  Cytheris,  a  lady  of  the  class,  at  the  house 
of  Volunmius  Eutrapelus,  her  protector.     His  friend 


THE    HETAIRjE.  Ill 

Atticus  was  with  liiin  ;  aud  altliough  Cicero  finds  some 
excuse  necessary,  it  is  still  obvious  that  even  grave 
and  sober  citizens  might  dine  in  such  equivocal  com- 
pany without  any  serious  compromise  of  character. 

It  was  perhaps  little  to  be  wondered  at  that  Horace 
did  not  squander  his  heart  upon  women  of  this  class. 
His  passions  were  too  well  controlled,  and  his  love  of 
ease  too  strong,  to  admit  of  his  being  carried  away  by 
the  headlong  impulses  of  a  deeply-seated  devotion. 
This  would  probably  have  been  the  case  even  had  the 
object  of  his  passion  been  worthy  of  an  unalloyed 
regard.     As  it  was, 

"  His  loves  were  like  most  other  loves, 
A  little  glow,  a  little  shiver  ;  " 

and  if  he  sometimes  had,  like  the  rest  of  mankind,  to 
pay  his  homage  to  the.  universal  passion  by  "  sighing 
upon  his  midnight  pillow "  for  the  regards  of  a  mis- 
tress whom  he  could  not  win,  or  who  had  played  him 
false,  he  was  never  at  a  loss  to  find  a  balm  for  his 
wounds  elsewhere.  He  was  not  the  man  to  nurse  the 
bitter-sweet  sorrows  of  the  heart — to  write,  and  to  feel, 
like  Burns — 

"  'Tis  sweeter  for  thee  despairing, 
Than  aught  in  the  world  beside." 


oJ 


Parabilem  amo  Vcncrem  facilemque,  "  Give  me  the 
beauty  that  is  not  too  coy,"  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of 
his  personal  creed.  How  should  it  have  been  other- 
wise] Knowing  woman  chiefly,  as  he  obviously  did, 
only  in  the   ranks  of  the   deuti-iuoiide,   he   was  not 


112  HORACE. 

likely  to  regard  the  fairest  face,  after  the  first  heyday 
of  his  youth  was  past,  as  worth  the  pain  its  owner's 
caprices  could  inflict.  For,  as  seen  under  that  phase, 
woman  was  apt  to  be  both  mercenary  and  capricious; 
and  if  the  poet  suffered,  as  he  did,  from  the  fickleness 
of  more  than  one  mistress,  the  probability  is — and  this 
he  was  too  honest  not  to  feel — that  they  had  only 
forestalled  him  in  inconstancy. 

If  Horace  ever  had  a  feeling  which  deserved  the 
name  of  love,  it  was  for  the  Cinara  mentioned  in  the 
lines  above  quoted.  She  belonged  to  the  class  of 
hetairse,  but  seems  to  have  preferred  him,  from  a 
genuine  feeling  of  affection,  to  her  wealthier  lovers. 
Holding  him  as  she  did  completely  under  her  thral- 
dom, it  was  no  more  than  natural  that  she  should 
have  played  with  his  emotions,  keeping  him  between 
ecstasy  and  torture,  as  such  a  woman,  especially  if  her 
own  heart  were  also  somewhat  engaged,  would  delight 
to  do  with  a  man  in  whose  love  she  must  have  rejoiced 
as  something  to  lean  upon  amid  the  sad  frivolities  ol 
her  life.  The  exquisite  pain  to  which  her  caprices 
occasionally  subjected  him  was  more  than  he  could 
bear  in  silence,  and  drove  him,  despite  his  quick  sense 
of  the  ridiculous,  into  lachrymose  avowals  to  Ma3cenas 
of  his  misery  over  his  wine,  which  were,  doubtless,  no 
small  source  of  amusement  to  the  easy-going  states- 
man,  before  his  wife  Terentia  had  taught  him  by  ex- 
perience what  infinite  torture  a  charming  and  coquettish 
woman  has  it  in  her  power  to  inflict.  Long  years 
afterwards,  when  he  is  well  on  to  fifty,  Horace  reminds 
his  friend  (Epistles,  1.  7)  of 


CINARA.  113 

*  The  woes  blabbed  o'er  our  wine,  when  Cinara  chose 
To  tease  me,  cruel  flirt — ah,  happy  woes  !  " — 

words  in  which  lurks  a  subtle  undercurrent  of  pathos, 
like  that  in  Sophie  Arnould's  exclamation  in  Le  Bran's 
Epigram, — 

"  Oh,  le  bon  temps  !  J'etais  bien  malheureuse  !  " 

Twice  also  in  his  later  odes  (IV.  1  and  13),  Horace 
recurs  with  tenderness  to  the  "  gentle  Cinara"  as 
having  held  the  paramount  place  in  his  heart.  She 
was  his  one  bit  of  romance,  and  this  all  the  more 
that  she  died  young.  Cinarce  breves  annos  fata  de- 
derunt — "  Few  years  the  fates  to  Cinara  allowed  ;" 
and  in  his  meditative  rambles  by  the  Digenti»,  the 
lonely  poet,  we  may  well  believe,  often  found  himself 
sighing  "  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand,  and  the 
sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still." 

In  none  of  his  love -poems  is  the  ring  of  personal 
feeling  more  perceptible  than  in  the  following.  It  is 
one  of  his  earliest,  and  if  we  are  to  identify  the  jSasera 
to  whom  it  is  addressed  with  the  ]NTa3era  referred  to  in 
Ode  14,  Look  III.,  it  must  have  been  written  Commie 
Planco,  that  is,  in  the  year  of  Horace's  return  to  Eome 
after  the  battle  of  Philippi. — 

"'Twas  night  ! — let  me  recall  to  thee  that  night ! 
The  silver  moon  in  the  unclouded  sky 
Amid  the  lesser  stars  was  shining  bright, 

When,  in  the  words  I  did  adjure  thee  by, 
Thou  with  thy  clinging  arms,  more  tightly  knit 

Around  me  than  the  ivy  clasps  the  oak, 
Didst  breathe  a  vow — mocking  the  gods  with  it — 
A  vow  which,  false  one,  thou  has  foully  broke ; 
a.  c.  vol.  vi.  H 


114  HORACE. 

That  while  the  ravening  wolf  should  hunt  the  flocks, 
The  shipman's  foe,  Orion,  vex  the  sea, 

And  zephyrs  waft  the  unshorn  Apollo's  locks, 
So  long  wouldst  thou  he  fond,  he  true  to  me ! 

"  Yet  shall  thy  heart,  Nseera,  bleed  for  this, 

For  if  in  Flaccus  aught  of  man  remain, 
Give  thou  another  joys  that  once  were  his, 

Some  other  maid  more  true  shall  soothe  his  pain  ; 
Nor  think  again  to  lure  him  to  thy  heart ! 

The  pang  once  felt,  his  love  is  past  recall  ; 
And  thou,  more  favoured  youth,  whoe'er  thou  art, 

Who  revell'st  now  in  triumph  o'er  his  fall, 
Though  thou  be  rich  in  land  and  golden  store, 

In  lore  a  sage,  with  shape  framed  to  beguile, 
Thy  heart  shall  ache  when,  this  brief  fancy  o'er, 

She  seeks  a  new  love,  and  I  calmly  smile." 

This  is  tlie  poetry  of  youth,  the  passion  of  wounded 
vanity  ;  but  it  is  clearly  the  product  of  a  strong  per- 
sonal feeling — a  feeling  which  has  more  often  found 
expression  in  poetry  than  the  higher  emotions  of  those 
with  whom  "  love  is  love  for  evermore,"  and  who 
have  infinite  pity,  but  no  rebuke,  for  faithlessness. 
The  lines  have  been  often  imitated  ;  and  in  Sir  Eobert 
Aytoun's  poem  on  "Woman's  Inconstancy,"  the  imita- 
tion has  a  charm  not  inferior  to  the  original. 

"Yet  do  thou  glory  in  thy  choice, 

Thy  choice  of  his  good  fortune  boast ; 
I'll  neither  grieve  nor  yet  rejoice 
To  see  him  gain  what  I  have  lost ; 
The  height  of  my  disdain  shall  be 
To  laugh  at  him,  to  blush  for  thee  ; 
To  love  thee  still,  yet  go  no  more 
A-begging  to  a  beggar's  door." 


ODE    TO  PYRRIIA.  115 

Note  how  Horace  deals  with  the  same  theme  in  his 
(Me  to  Pyrrha,  famous  in  Milton's  overrated  transla- 
tion, and  the  difference  Let  ween  the  young  man  writ- 
ing under  the  smart  of  wounded  feeling  and  the  poet, 
calmly  though  intensely  elaborating  his  subject  as  a 
work  of  art,  becomes  at  once  apparent. 

"  Pyrrha,  what  slender  boy,  in  perfume  steeped, 
Doth  in  the  shade  of  some  delightful  grot 
Caress  thee  now  on  couch  with  roses  heaped  ? 
For  whom  dost  thou  thine  amber  tresses  knot 

"  "With  all  thy  seeming-artless  grace  1     Ah  me, 
How  oft  will  he  thy  perfidy  bewail, 
And  joys  all  flown,  and  shudder  at  the  sea 
Rough  with  the  chafing  of  the  blust'rous  gale, 

"Who  now,  fond  dreamer,  revels  in  thy  charms  ; 
Who,  all  unweeting  how  the  breezes  veer, 
Hopes  still  to  find  a  welcome  in  thine  arms 
As  warm  as  now,  and  thee  as  loving-dear  ! 

"  Ah,  woe  for  those  on  whom  thy  spell  is  flung  ! 
My  votive  tablet,  in  the  temple  set. 
Proclaims  that  I  to  ocean's  god  have  hung 

The  vestments  in  my  shipwreck  smirched  and  wet." 

It  may  be  that  among  Horace's  odes  some  were 
directly  inspired  by  the  ladies  to  whom  they  are 
addressed ;  but  it  is  time  that  modern  criticism  should 
brush  away  all  the  elaborate  nonsense  which  has  been 
written  to  demonstrate  that  Pyrrha,  Chloe,  Lalage, 
Lydia,  Lyde,  Leuconoe,  Tyndaris,  Glycera,  and  Barine, 
not  to  mention  others,  were  real  personages  to  whom 
+he  poet  was  attached.     At  this  rate  his  occupations 


116  HORACE. 

must  have  rather  been  those  of  a  Don  Giovanni  than  of 
a  man  of  studious  habits  and  feeble  health,  who  found 
it  hard  enough  to  keep  pace  with  the  milder  dissipa- 
tions of  the  social  circle.  We  are  absolutely  without 
any  information  as  to  these  ladies,  whose  liquid  and 
beautiful  names  are  almost  poems  in  themselves  ;  never- 
theless the  most  wonderful  romances  have  been  spun 
about  them  out  of  the  inner  consciousness  of  the  com 
mentators.  Who  would  venture  to  deal  in  this  way  with 
the  Eleanore,  and  "rare  pale  Margaret,"  and  Cousin 
Amy,  of  Mr  Tennyson  1  And  yet  to  do  so  would  be 
quite  as  reasonable  as  to  conclude,  as  some  critics  have 
done,  that  such  a  poem  as  the  following  (Odes,  I.  23) 
was  not  a  graceful  poetical  exercise  merely,  but  a 
serious  appeal  to  the  object  of  a  serious  passion  : — 

"  Nay,  hear  me,  dearest  Chloe,  pray  ! 
You  shun  me  like  a  timid  fawn, 
That  seeks  its  mother  all  the  day 

By  forest  brake  and  upland  lawn, 
Of  every  passing  breeze  afraid, 
And  leaf  that  twitters  in  the  glade. 

"  Let  but  the  wind  with  sudden  rush 
The  whispers  of  the  wood  awake, 
Or  lizard  green  disturb  the  hush, 

Quick-darting  through  the  grassy  brake, 
The  foolish  frightened  thing  will  start, 
With  trembling  knees  and  beating  heart.* 

*  The  same  idea  has  been  beautifully  worked  out  by  Spenser, 
in  whom,  and  in  Milton,  the  influence  of  Horace's  poetry  is 
perhaps  more  frequently  traceable  than  in  any  of  our  poets  :-- 

'•  Like  as  an  hynde  forth  singled  from  the  herde, 
That  hath  escaped  from  a  ravenous  beast, 


CHLOE  AXD   I  YD  I  A.  117 

"  But  I  am  neither  lion  fell 

Nor  tiger  grim  to  work  you  woe  ; 
I  love  you,  sweet  one,  much  too  well, 

Then  cling  not  to  your  mother  so, 
But  to  a  lover's  fonder  arms 
Confide  your  ripe  and  rosy  charms." 

Such  a  poem  as  this,  one  should  have  supposed, 
might  have  escaped  the  imputation  of  being  dictated 
l>y  mere   personal  desire.      But  no;   even  so  acute  a 
critic  as  Walckenaer  will  have  it  that  Chloe  was  one 
of  Horace's  many  mistresses,  to  whom  he  fled  for  con- 
solation when  Lydia,    another  of  them,   played   him 
false,    "  et   qu'il   l'a    recherchee    avec    empressement." 
And  his  sole  ground  for  this  conclusion  is  the  circum- 
stance that  a  Chloe  is  mentioned  in  this  sense  in  the 
famous  Dialogue,   in  which  Horace  and  Lydia  have 
quite  gratuitously  been  assumed  to  be  the  speakers. 
That  is  to  say,  he  first  assumes  that  the  dialogue  is 
not  a  mere  exercise  of  fancy,  but  a  serious  fact,  and, 
having  got  so   far,   concludes   as   a  matter   of   course 
that    the    Chloe    of    the    one    ode    is    the    Chloe    of 
the  other  !     "  The   ancients,"   as   Buttmann  has  well 
said,    "  had   the    skill    to    construct    such    poems    so 
that  each  speech  tells  us  by  whom  it  is  spoken  ;  but 
we  let  the   editors    treat  us  all  our  lives    as   school- 
Yet  flies  away,  of  her  own  feet  afearde  ; 
And  every  leaf,  that  shaketh  with  the  least 
Murnmre  of  winde,  her  terror  hath  encreast ; 
So  fled  fayre  Flojrimel  from  her  vaine  feare, 
Lona;  afVr  she  from  perill  was  releast; 
Each  shade  she  saw,  unci  each  noyse  she  did  heare, 
Did  seeme  to  be  the  ^aine,  which  she  escaypt  whileare. * 

—Fairy  Queen,  m.  vii.  1. 


118  HORACE. 

boys,  and  interline  such  dialogues,  as  we  do  our 
plays,  with  the  names.  Even  in  an  English  poem 
we  should  he  offended  at  seeing  Collins  by  the  side 
of  Phyllis."  Read  without  the  prepossession  which 
the  constant  mention  of  it  as  a  dialogue  between 
Horace  and  Lydia  makes  it  difficult  to  avoid,  the 
Ode  commends  itself  merely  as  a  piece  of  graceful 
fancy.  Peal  feeling  is  the  last  thing  one  looks  for 
in  two  such  excessively  well-bred  and  fickle  person- 
ages as  the  speakers.  Their  pouting  and  recon- 
ciliation make  very  pretty  fooling,  such  as  might  be 
appropriate  in  the  wonderful  beings  who  people  the 
garden  landscapes  of  Watteau.  But  where  are  the 
fever  and  the  strong  pulse  of  passion  which,  in  less 
ethereal  mortals,  would  be  proper  to  such  a  theme? 
Had  there  been  a  real  lady  in  the  case,  the  tone 
would  have  been  less  measured,  and  the  strophes  less 
skilfully  balanced. 

"  He.— Whilst  I  was  clear  and  thou  wert  kind. 
And  I,  and  I  alone,  might  lie 
Upon  thy  snowy  breast  reclined, 
Not  Persia's  king  so  blest  as  I. 

She. — Whilst  I  to  thee  was  all  in  all, 

Nor  Chine  might  with  Lydia  vie, 
Renowned  in  ode  or  madrigal, 
Not  Roman  Ilia  famed  as  I. 

Hh. — I  now  am  Thracian  Chloe's  slave, 

With  hand  and  voice  that  charms  the  air, 
For  whom  even  death  itself  I'd  brave, 
So  fate  the  darling  girl  would  spare  ! 


THE  AMjEB(EAN  DIALOGUE.  119 

She. — I  dote  on  Calais — and  I 

Am  all  his  passion,  all  Iris  care, 
For  whom  a  double  death  I'd  die, 
So  fate  the  darling  boy  would  spare ! 

He. — What,  if  onr  ancient  love  return, 
And  bind  us  with  a  closer  tie, 
If  I  the  fair-haired  Chloe  spurn, 
And  as  of  old,  for  Lydia  sigh  ? 

She. — Though  lovelier  than  von  star  is  he, 

And  lighter  thou  than  cork — ah  why  ? 
More  churlish,  too,  than  Adria's  sea, 
With  thee  I'd  live,  with  thee  I'd  die  !  " 

In  this  graceful  trifle  Horace  is  simply  dealing  with 
one  of  the  commonplaces  of  poetry,  most  probably 
only  transplanting  a  Greek  flower  into  the  Latin  soil. 
There  is  more  of  the  vigour  of  originality  and  of  living 
truth  in  the  following  ode  to  Barine  (II.  8),  where  he 
gives  us  a  cameo  portrait,  carved  with  exquisite  finish, 
of  that  beanie  de  citable,  "  dallying  and  dangerous," 
as  Charles  Lamb  called  Peg  Wofrington's,  and,  what 
hers  was  not,  heartless,  which  never  dies  out  of  the 
world.  A  real  person,  Lord  Lytton  thinks,  uwas  cer- 
tainly addressed,  and  in  a  tone  which,  to  such  a  per- 
son, would  have  been  the  most  exquisite  flattery;  and 
as  certainly  the  person  is  not  so  addressed  by  a  lover  " 
— a  criticism  which,  coming  from  such  an  observer, 
outweighs  the  opposite  conclusions  of  a  score  of 
pedantic  scholars  : — 

"  If  for  thy  perjuries  and  broken  truth, 
Barine,  thou  hadst  ever  come  to  harm, 
"  Hadst  lost,  but  in  a  nail  or  blackened  tooth, 
One  single  charm, 


120  HORACE. 

"  I'd  trust  thee  ;  but  when  thou  art  most  forsworn, 

Thou  blazest  forth  with  beauty  most  supreme, 
And  of  our  young  men  art,  noon,  night,  and  morn, 
The  thought,  the  dream. 

"To  thee  'tis  gain  thy  mother's  dust  to  mock, 
To  mock  the  silent  watchfires  of  the  night, 
All  heaven,  the  gods,  on  whom  death's  icy  shock 
Can  never  light. 

"  Smiles  Venus'  self,  I  vow,  to  see  thy  arts, 

The  guileless  Nymphs  and  cruel  Cupid  smile, 
And,  smiling,  whets  on  bloody  stone  his  darts 
Of  fire  the  while. 

"  Nay  more,  our  youth  grow  up  to  be  thy  prey, 

New  slaves  throng  round,  and  those  who  crouched  at 
first, 
Though  oft  they  threaten,  leave  not  for  a  day 
Thy  roof  accurst. 

"  Thee  mothers  for  their  unfledged  younglings  dread  ; 
Thee  niggard  old  men  dread,  and  brides  new-made, 
In  misery,  lest  their  lords  neglect  their  bed, 
By  thee  delayed." 

Horace  is  more  at  home  in  playful  raillery  of  the 
bewildering  effects  of  love  upon  others,  than  in  giving 
expression  to  its  emotions  as  felt  by  himself.  In  the 
fourteenth  Epode,  it  is  true,  he  begs  Maecenas  to 
excuse  his  failure  to  execute  some  promised  poem, 
because  he  is  so  completely  upset  by  his  love  for  a 
certain  naughty  Phryne  that  he  cannot  put  a  couple 
of  linos  together.  Again,  be  tells  us  (Odes,  I.  19,) 
into  what  a  ferment  his  whole  being  has  been  thrown, 
long  after  he    bad   thought   himself   safe    from    such 


BAD  BE  "SUFFERED  L0VE"1  121 

emotions,  by  the  marble-like  sheen  of  Glycera's  beauty 
— her  grata  protervitas,  et  voltus  nimium  lubricus 
adspici — 

"  Her  pretty,  pert,  provoking  ways, 
And  face  too  fatal-fair  to  see." 

The  first  Ode'  of  the  Fourth  Book  is  a  beautiful 
fantasia  on  a  similar  theme.  He  paints,  too,  the 
tortures  of  jealousy  with  the  vigour  (Odes,  I.  13)  oi 
a  man  who  knew  something  of  them  : — 

"  Then  reels  my  brain,  then  on  my  cheek 
The  shifting  colour  comes  and  goes, 

And  tears,  that  flow  unbidden,  speak 
The  torture  of  my  inward  throes, 

The  fierce  unrest,  the  deathless  flame, 

That  slowly  macerates  my  frame." 

And  when  rallying  his  friend  Tibullus  (Odes,  I.  23) 
about  his  doleful  ditties  on  the  fickleness  of  his  mis- 
tress Glycera,  he  owns  to  having  himself  suffered  ter- 
ribly in  the  same  way.  But  despite  all  this,  it  is  very 
obvious  that  if  love  has,  in  Rosalind's  phrase,  "  clapped 
him  on  the  shoulder,"  the  little  god  left  him  "  heart- 
whole."  Being,  as  it  is,  the  source  of  the  deepest  and 
strongest  emotions,  love  presents  many  aspects  for  the 
humorist,  and  perhaps  to  no  one  more  than  to  him  who 
has  felt  it  intensely.  Horace  may  or  may  not  have 
sounded  the  depths  of  the  passion  in  his  own  person ; 
but,  in  any  case,  a  fellow-feeling  for  the  lover's  pleas- 
ures and  pains  served  to  infuse  a  tone  of  kindliness 
into  his  ridicule.  How  charming  in  this  way  is  the 
Ode  to  Lydia  (I.  8),  of  which  the  late  Henry  LuttreT* 


122  HORACE. 

once  popular  and  still  delightful  '  Letters  to  Julia '  is 
an  elaborate  paraphrase  ! — 

"  Why,  Lydia,  why, 
I  pray,  by  all  the  gods  above, 

Art  so  resolved  that  Svbaris  should  die, 
And  all  for  love  ? 

"  Why  doth  he  shun 
The  Campus  Martins'  sultry  glare  ? 

He  that  once  recked  of  neither  dust  nor  sun, 
Why  rides  he  there, 

"  First  of  the  brave, 
Taming  the  Gallic  steed  no  more  ? 

Why  doth  he  shrink  from  Tiber's  yellow  wave  ? 
Why  thus  abhor 

"  The  wrestlers'  oil, 
As  'twere  from  viper's  tongue  distilled  ? 
Why  do  his  arms  no  livid  bruises  soil, 
He,  once  so  skilled, 

"  The  disc  or  dart 
Far,  far  beyond  the  mark  to  hurl  ? 

And  tell  me,  tell  me,  in  what  nook  apart, 
Like  baby-girl, 

"  Lurks  the  poor  boy, 
Veiling  Ids  manhood,  as  did  Thetis'  son, 

To  'scape  war's  bloody  clang,  while  fated  Troy 
Was  yet  undone  ?" 

In  the  same  class  with  this  poem  may  bo  ranked 
the  following  ode  (I.  27).  Just  as  the  poet  has  made 
us  as  familiar  with  the  lovelorn  Sybaris  as  if  we 
knew  him,  so  does  he  here  transport  us  into  the  middle 


A     WIXE-PARTY.  123 

of  a  wine-party  of  young  Romans,  with  that  vivid  dra- 
matic force  wl  ich  constitutes  one  great  source  of  the 
excellence  of  his  lyrics. 

"  Hold  !  hold  !     Tis  for  Thracian  madmen  to  fight 
With  wine-cups,  that  only  were  made  for  delight. 
'Tis  barbarous — brutal !     I  beg  of  you  all, 
Disgrace  not  our  banquet  with  bloodshed  and  brawl ! 

"  Sure,  Median  scimitars  strangely  accord 
With  lamps  and  with  wine  at  the  festival  board  ! 
'Tis  out  of  all  rule  !     Friends,  your  places  resume, 
And  let  us  have  order  once  more  in  the  room  ! 

"  If  I  am  to  join  you  m  pledging  a  beaker 
Of  this  stout  Falernian,  choicest  of  liquor, 
Megilla's  fair  brother  must  say,  from  what  eyes 
Flew  the  shaft,  sweetly  fatal,  that  causes  his  sighs. 

"  How — dumb  !     Then  I  drink  not  a  drop.     Never  blush, 
Whoever  the  fair  one  may  be,  man  !     Tush,  tush  ! 
She'll  do  your  taste  credit,  I'm  certain — for  yours 
Was  always  select  in  its  little  amours. 

"  Don't  be  frightened  !    We're  all  upon  honour,  you  know, 
So  out  with  your  tale  ! — Graci'ous  powers  !     Is  it  so  ? 
Poor  fellow  !     Your  lot  has  crone  sadlv  amiss, 
When  you  feL  into  such  a  Charybdis  as  this  ! 

■'  What  witch,  what  magician,  with  drinks  and  with  charms, 
What  god  can  effect  your  release  from  her  harms  ? 
So  fettered,  scarce  Pegasus'  self,  were  he  near  you, 
From  the  fangs  of  this  triple  Chimsera  would  clear  you." 

In  this  poem,  which  lias  all  the^effect  of  an  im- 
promptu, we  have  a  genre  picture  of  Roman  life,  as 
vivid  as  though  painted  by  the  pencil  of  Couture  or 
Gerome. 


124  HORACE. 

Serenades  were  as  common  an  expedient  among 
the  Roman  gallants  of  the  days  of  Augustus  as  among 
their  modern  successors.  In  the  fine  climate  of 
Greece,  Italy,  and  Spain,  they  were  a  natural  growth, 
and  involved  no  great  strain  upon  a  wooer's  endurance. 
They  assume  a  very  different  aspect  under  a  northern 
sky,  where  young  Absolute,  found  by  his  Lydia 
Languish  "  in  the  garden,  in  the  coldest  night  in 
January,  stuck  like  a  dripping  statue,"  presents  <i 
rather  lugubrious  spectacle.  Horace  (Odes,  III.  7) 
warns  the  fair  Asterie,  during  the  absence  of  her  hus- 
band abroad,  to  shut  her  ears  against  the  musical 
nocturnes  of  a  certain  Enipeus  : — 

"  At  nightfall  shut  your  doors,  nor  then 
Look  down  into  the  street  again, 
When  quavering  fifes  complain  ;" 

using  almost  the  words  of  Shylock  to  his   daughter 
Jessica  : — 

u  Lock  up  my  doors  ;  and  when  you  hear  the  drum 
And  the  vile  squeaking  of  the  wry  necked  fife, 
Clamper  not  you  up  to  the  casement  then, 
Nor  thrust  your  head  into  the  public  street." 

The  name  given  to  such  a  serenade,  adopted  pro- 
bably, with  the  serenades  themselves,  from  Greece, 
was  paraclausithyron — literally,  an  out-of-door  lament.. 
Hire  is  a  specimen  of  what  they  were  (Odes,  III.  10), 
in  which,  under  the  guise  of  imitating  their  form, 
Horace  quietly  makes  a  mock  of  the  absurdity  of  the 
practice.  His  serenade!  has  none  of  the  insensibility 
to  the  elements  of  the  lover  in  the  Scotch  song  — 


A    SERENADE.  125 

"  Wi'  the  sleet  in  my  hair,  I'd  gang  ten  miles  and  inair, 
For  a  word  o'  that  sweet  lip  o'  thine,  o'  thine, 
For  ae  glance  o'  thy  dark  e'e  divine." 

Neither  is  there  in  his  pleading  the  tone  of  earnest 
entreat}^  which  marks  the  wooer,  in  a  similar  plight, 
of  Burns's  "  Let  me  in  this  ae  nicht  " — 

"  Thou  hear'st  the  winter  wind  and  weet, 
Nae  star  blinks  through  the  driving  sleet : 
Tak  pity  on  my  weary  feet, 

And  shield  me  frae  the  rain,  jo." 

There  can  be  no  mistake  as  to  the  seriousness  of  this 
appeal.     Horace's  is  a  mere  jeu-d 'esprit : — 

"  Though  your  drink  were  Tanais,  ehillest  of  rivers, 
And  your  lot  with  some  conjugal  savage  were  cast, 
You  would  pity,  sweet  Lyce,  the  poor  soul  that  shivers 
Out  here  at  your  door  in  the  merciless  blast. 

"  Only  hark  how  the  doorway  goes  straining  and  creaking, 
And  the  piercing  wind  pipes  through  the  trees  that 
surround 
The  court  of  your  villa,  while  black  frost  is  streaking 
With  ice  the  crisp  snow  that  lies  thick  on  the  ground ! 

"  In  your  pride — Venus  hates  it — no  longer  envelop  ye, 
Or  haply  you'll  find  yourself  laid  on  the  shelf  ; 
You  never  were  made  for  a  prudish  Penelope, 
'Tis  not  in  the  blood  of  your  sires  or  yourself. 

*'  Though  nor  gifts  nor  entreaties  can  win  a  soft  answer, 
Nor  the  violet  pale  of  my  love-ravaged  cheek, 
To  your  husband's  intrigue  with  a  Greek  ballet-dancer, 
Though  you  still  are  blind,  and  forgiving  and  meek  ; 


126  HORACE. 

"  Yet  be  not  as  cruel — forgive  ray  upbraiding — 

As  snakes,  nor  as  hard  as  the  toughest  of  oak  ; 
To  stand  out  here,  drenched  to  the  skin,  serenading 
All  night  may  in  time  prove  too  much  of  a  joke." 

It  is  not  often  that  Horace's  poetry  is  vitiated  by 
bad  taste.  Strangely  enough,  almost  the  only  in- 
stances of  it  occur  where  he  is  writing  of  women,  as 
in  the  Ode  to  Lydia  (Book  I.  25)  and  to  Lyce 
(Book  IV.  13).  Both  ladies  seem  to  have  been  former 
favourites  of  his,  and  yet  the  burden  of  these  poems  is 
exultation  in  the  decay  of  their  charms.  The  deaden- 
ing influence  of  mere  sensuality,  and  of  the  prevalent 
low  tone  of  morals,  must  indeed  have  been  great,  when 
a  man  "so  singularly  susceptible,"  as  Lord  Lytton  has 
truly  described  him,  "to  amiable,  graceful,  gentle,  and 
noble  impressions  of  man  and  of  life,"  could  write  of  a 
woman  whom  he  had  once  loved  in  a  strain  like  this  : — 

"  The  gods  have  heard,  the  gods  have  heard  my  prayer  ; 
Yes,  Lyce  !  you  are  growing  old,  and  still 
You  struggle  to  look  fair  ; 

You  drink,  and  dance,  and  trill 
Your  songs  to  youthful  love,  in  accents  weak 

With  wine,  and  age,  and  passion.     Youthful  Love ! 
He  dwells  in  Chia's  clunk, 

And  hears  her  harp-strings  move. 
Rude  hoy,  he  flies  like  lightning  o'er  the  heath 

Past  withered  trees  like  you;  you're  wrinkled  now; 
The  white  has  left  your  teeth, 
And  settled  on  vour  brow. 
Your  Coan  silks,  your  jewels  bright  as  stars — 
Ah  no  !  they  bring  not  back  the  days  of  old, 
In  public  calendars 

By  flying  time  enrolled. 


LYCE.  127 

Where  now  that  beauty  ?     Where  those  movements  I 
Where 
That  colour  ?     What  of  her,  of  her  is  left, 
Who,  breathing  Love's  own  air, 
Me  of  myself  bereft, 
Who  reigned  in  Ginara's  steal,  a  fair,  fair  face, 
Queen  of  sweet  arts  ?     But  Fate  to  Cinara  gave 
A  life  of  little  space; 

And  now  she  cheats  the  grave 
Of  Lyce,  spared  to  raven's  length  of  days, 

That  youth  may  see,  with  laughter  and  disgust, 
A  firebrand,  once  ablaze, 

Now  smouldering  in  grey  dust."       (C.) 

What  had  this  wretched  Lyce  done  that  Horace 
should  have  prayed  the  gods  to  strip  her  of  her 
charms,  and  to  degrade  her  from  a  haughty  beauty 
into  a  maudlin  hag,  disgusting  and  ridiculous  1  Why- 
cast  such  very  merciless  stones  at  one  who,  by  his  own 
avowal,  had  erewhile  witched  his  verv  soul  from  him  1 
Why  rejoice  to  see  this  once  beautiful  creature  the 
seoif  of  all  the  heartless  young  fops  of  Home '?  If 
she  had  injured  him,  what  of  that?  Was  it  so  very 
strange  that  a  woman  trained,  like  all  the  class  to 
which  she  belonged,  to  be  the  plaything  of  man's 
caprice,  should  have  been  fickle,  mercenary,  or  even 
heartless  1  Poor  Lyce  might  at  least  have  claimed  his 
silence,  if  he  could  not  do,  what  Thackeray  says 
every  honest  fellow  should  do,  "think  well  of  the 
woman  he  has  once  thought  well  of,  and  remember 
her  with  kindness  and  tenderness,  as  a  man  remembers 
a  place  where  he  has  been  very  happy." 

Horace's  better  self  comes  out  in  his  playful  appeal 


128  HORACE. 

to  his  friend  Xanthias  (Odes,  II.  4)  not  to  he  ashamed 
of  having  fallen  in  love  with  his  handmaiden  Phyllia 
That  she  is  a  slave  is  a  matter  of  no  account.  A  girl 
f  such  admirable  qualities  must  surely  come  of  a 
good  stock,  and  is  well  worth  any  man's  love.  iJid 
not  Achilles  succumb  to  Briseis,  Ajax  to  Tecmessa, 
A immenmon  himself  to  Cassandra?     Moreover, 

"  For  aught  that  you  know,  the  fair  Phyllis  may  be 

The  shoot  of  some  highly  respectable  stem ; 
Nay,  she  counts,  never  doubt  it,  some  kings  in  her  tree, 

And  laments  the  lost  acres  once  lorded  by  them. 
Never  think  that  a  creature  so  exquisite  grew 

In  the  haunts  where  but  vice  and  dishonour  are  known, 
Nor  deem  that  a  girl  so  unselfish,  so  true, 

Had  a  mother  'twould  shame  thee  to  take  for  thine  own." 

Here  we  have  the  true  Horace  ;  and  after  all  these 
fascinating  but  doubtful  Lydes,  Neasras,  and  Pyrrhas, 
it  is  pleasant  to  come  across  a  young  beauty  like  this 
Phyllis,  sic  fidelem,  sic  lucro  aversam.  She,  at  least, 
is  a  fresh  and  fragrant  violet  among  the  languorous 
hothouse  splendours  of  the  Horatian  garden. 

Domestic  love,  which  plays  so  large  a  part  in 
modern  poetry,  is  a  theme  rarely  touched  on  in 
Roman  verse.  Hence  we  know  but  little  of  the 
Romans  in  their  homes — for  such  a  topic  used  to  be 
thought  beneath  the  dignity  of  history — and  especially 
little  of  the  women,  who  presided  over  what  have  been 
called  "the  tender  and  temperate  honours  of  the 
hearth."  The  ladies  who  flourish  in  the  poetry  and 
also  in  the  history  of  those  times,  however  conspicuous 
for  beauty  or  attraction,  are  not  generally  of  the  kind 


" 


DOMESTIC  LOVE  IX   THE  AUQV 


that  make  home  happy.  Such  matrons  as  we  chiefly 
read  of  there  would  in  the  present  day  be  apt  to 
figure  in  the  divorce  court.  Xor  is  the  explanation 
of  this  difficult.  The  prevalence  of  marriage  for  mere 
wealth  or  connection,  and  the  facility  of  divorce, 
which  made  the  marriage-tie  almost  a  farce  among  the 
upper  classes,  had  resulted,  as  it  could  not  fail  to  do, 
in  a  great  debasement  of  morals.  A  lady  did  not  lose 
caste  either  by  being  divorced,  or  by  seeking  divorce, 
from  husband  after  husband.  And  as  wives  in  the 
higher  ranks  often  held  the  purse-strings,  they  made 
themselves  pretty  frequently  more  dreaded  than  beloved 
by  their  lords,  through  being  tyrannical,  if  not  un- 
chaste, or  both.  So  at  least  Horace  plainly  indicates 
(Odes,  III.  24),  when  contrasting  the  vices  of  Rome 
with  the  simpler  virtues  of  some  of  the  nations  that 
were  under  its  sway.  In  those  happier  lands,  he 
says,  "  Nee  dotata  regit  virum  cowjux,  nee  nitido  fidii 
adultero  " — 

"  No  downed  dame  her  spouse 
O'erbears,  nor  trusts  the  sleek  seducer's  vows." 

But  it  would  be  as  wrong  to  infer  from  this  that  the 
taint  was  universal,  as  it  would  be  to  gauge  our  own 
social  morality  by  the  erratic  matrons  and  fast  young 
ladies  with  whom  satirical  essayists  delight  to  point 
their  periods.  The  human  heart  is  stronger  than  the 
corruptions  of  luxury,  even  among  the  luxurious  and 
the  rich  ;  and  the  life  of  struggle  and  privation  which 
is  the  life  of  the  mass  of  every  nation  would  have 
been  intolerable  but  for  the  security  and  peace  of  well- 
a.  c.  vol.  vi.  i 


130  HORACE. 

ordered  and  happy  households.  Sweet  honest  love, 
cemented  by  years  of  sympathy  and  mutual  endurance, 
was  then,  as  ever,  the  salt  of  human  life.  Many  a 
monumental  inscription,  steeped  in  the  tenderest 
pathos,  assures  us  of  the  fact.  What,  for  example, 
must  have  been  the  home  of  the  man  who  wrote  on 
his  wife's  tomb,  "  She  never  caused  me  a  pang  but 
when  she  died  ! "  And  Catullus,  mere  man  of  pleas- 
ure as  he  was,  must  have  had  strongly  in  his  heart 
the  thought  of  what  a  tender  and  pure-souled  womar 
had  been  in  his  friend's  home,  when  he  wrote  his  e* ' 
quisite  lines  to  Calvus  on  the  death  of  Quinctilia  : — 

"  Calvus,  if  those  now  silent  in  the  tomb 

Can  feel  the  touch  of  pleasure  in  our  tears 
For  those  we  loved,  that  perished  in  their  bloom, 

And  the  departed  friends  of  former  years — ■ 
Oh,  then,  full  surely  thy  Quinctilia's  love 

For  the  untimely  fate,  that  bids  thee  part, 
Will  fade  before  the  bliss  she  feels  to  know 

How  very  dear  she  is  unto  thy  heart ! " 

Horace,  the  bachelor,  revered  the  marriage  -  tie,  and 
did  his  best,  by  his  verses,  to  forward  the  policy  of 
Augustus  in  his  effort  to  arrest  the  decay  of  morals 
by  enforcing  the  duty  of  marriage,  which  the  well-to- 
do  Romans  of  that  day  were  inclined  to  shirk 
whenever  they  could.  Nay,  the  charm  of  constancy 
and  conjugal  sympathy  inspired  a  few  of  his  very 
finest  lines  (Odes,  I.  13) — " Felices  ter  et  dmplius,  quos 
irrupta  tenet  copula"  &c, —  the  feeling  of  which  is 
better  preserved  in  Moore's  well-known  paraphrase 
*han  is  possible  in  mere  translation  : — 


SINGLE  HIMSELF,   EXTOLS  MARRIAGE.      13* 

'•'  There's  a  bliss  beyond  all  that  the  minstrel  has  told, 
When  two  that  are  linked  in  one  heavenly  tie, 
With  heart  never  changing,  and  brow  never  cold, 

Love  on  through  all  ills,  and  love  on  till  they  die  ! 
One  hour  of  a  pas.sion  so  sacred  is  worth 

Whole  ages  of  heartless  and  wandering  bliss  ; 
And  oh  !  if  there  be  an  Elysium  on  earth, 
It  is  this,  it  is  this  ! " 

To  leave  the  placens  uxor — "  the  winsome  wife  " — 
behind,  is  one  of  the  saddest  regrets,  Horace  tells  his 
friend  Posthumus  (Odes,  II.  14),  which  death  can 
bring.  Still  Horace  only  sang  the  praises  of  marriage, 
contenting  himself  with  painting  the  Eden  within 
which,  for  reasons  unknown  to  us,  he  never  sought 
to  enter.  He  was  well  up  in  life,  probably,  before 
these  sager  views  dawned  upon  him.  Was  it  then 
too  late  to  reduce  his  precepts  to  practice,  or  was  he 
unable  to  overcome  his  dread  of  the  dotata  eonjux, 
and  thought  his  comfort  would  be  safer  in  the  hands 
of  some  less  exacting  fair,  such  as  the  Phyllis  10 
whom  the  following  Ode,  one  of  his  latest  (IV.  11),  is 
addressed  1 — 

"  I  have  laid  in  a  cask  of  Albanian  wine, 

Which  nine  mellow  summers  have  ripened  and  more  ; 
In  my  garden,  dear  Phyllis,  thy  brows  to  entwine, 

Grows  the  brightest  of  parsley  in  plentiful  store. 
There  is  ivy  to  gleam  on  thy  dark  glossy  hair  ; 

My  plate,  newly  burnished,  enlivens  my  rooms  , 
And  the  altar,  athirst  for  its  victim,  is  there, 

Enwreathed  with  chaste  vervain  and  choicest  of  bloom  a. 

"  Every  hand  in  the  household  is  busily  toiling, 
And  hither  and  thither  boys  bustle  and  girls  ; 


132  HORACE. 

Whilst,  up  from  the  hearth-fires  careering  and  coiling. 

The  smoke  round  the  rafter-beams  languidly  curls. 
Let  the  joys  of  the  revel  be  parted  between  us  ! 

'Tis  the  Ides  of  young  April,  the  day  which  divides 
The  month,  dearest  Phyllis,  of  ocean-sprung  Venus, 

A  day  to  me  dearer  than  any  besides. 

"  And  well  may  I  prize  it,  and  hail  its  returning — 

My  own  natal-day  not  more  hallowed  nor  dear ; 
For  Maecenas,  my  friend,  dates  from  this  happy  morning 

The  life  which  has  swelled  to  a  lustrous  career. 
You  sigh  for  young  Telephus  :  better  forget  him  ! 

His  rank  is  not  yours,  and  the  gaudier  charms 
Of  a  girl  that's  both  wealthy  and  wanton  benet  him, 

And  hold  him  the  fondest  of  slaves  in  her  arms. 

"  Remember  fond  Phaethon's  fiery  sequel, 

And  heavenward-aspiring  Bellerophon's  fate  ; 
And  pine  not  for  one  who  would  ne'er  be  your  equal. 

But  level  your  hopes  to  a  lowlier  mate. 
So,  come,  my  own  Phyllis,  my  heart's  latest  treasure — 

For  ne'er  for  another  this  bosom  shall  long — 
And  I'll  teach,  while  your  loved  voice  re-echoes  the  measure, 

How  to  charm  away  care  with  the  magic  of  song." 

This  is  very  pretty  and  picturesque  ;  and  Maecenas 
was  sure  to  be  charmed  with  it  as  a  birthday  Ode,  for 
such  it  certainly  was,  whether  there  was  any  real 
Phyllis  in  the  case  or  not.  Most  probably  there  was 
not, — the  allusion  to  Telephus,  the  lady-killer,  is  so 
very  like  many  other  allusions  of  the  same  kind  ir 
other  Odes,  which  are  plainly  mere  exeirises  of  fancy. 
and  the  protestation  that  the  lady  is  the  very,  very 
last  of  his  loves,  so  precisely  what  all  middle-aged 
gentlemen  think  it  right  to  say,  whose  "jeunesse"  like 
the  poet's,  has  been  notoriously  "  oragevse." 


RUSTIC  PHTDYLE.  133 

It  was  probably  not  within  the  circle  of  his  city 
friends  that  Horace  saw  the  women  for  whom  he 
entertained  the  deepest  respect,  but  by  the  hearth-fire 
in  the  farmhouse,  "the  homely  house,  that  harbours 
quiet  rest,"  with  which  he  was  no  less  familiar,  where 
people  lived  in  a  simple  and  natural  way,  and  where, 
if  anywhere,  good  wives  and  mothers  were  certain  to 
be  found.  It  was  manifestly  by  some  woman  of  this 
class  that  the  following  poem  (Odes,  III.  23)  was 
inspired  : — 

"  If  thou,  at  each  new  moon,  thine  upturned  palms, 
My  rustic  Phidyle,  to  heaven  shalt  lift, 
The  Lares  soothe  with  steam  of  fragrant  balms, 
A  sow,  and  fruits  new-plucked,  thy  simple  gift, 

"  Nor  venomed  blast  shall  nip  thy  fertile  vine, 
Nor  mildew  blight  thy  harvest  in  the  ear; 
Nor  shall  thy  flocks,  sweet  nurslings,  peak  and  pine, 
When  apple-bearing  Autumn  chills  the  year. 

"  The  victim  marked  lor  sacrifice,  that  feeds 
On  snow-capped  Algidus,  in  leafy  lane 
Of  oak  and  ilex,  or  on  Alba's  meads, 

With  its  rich  bloo>l  the  pontiff's  axe  may  stain  : 

"  Thy  little  gods  for  humbler  tribute  call 

Than  blood  of  many  victims;  twine  for  them. 
Of  rosemary  a  simple  coronal, 

And  the  lush  myrtle's  frail  and  fragrant  stem. 

"  The  costliest  sacrifice  that  wealth  can  make 
From  the  incensed  Penates  less  commands 
A  soft  response,  than  doth  the  poorest  cake, 
If  on  the  altar  laid  with  spotless  hands." 

When  this  was  written,  Horace  had  got  far  beyond 


134  HORACE. 

che  Epicurean  creed  of  his  youth.  He  had  come  to 
believe  in  the  active  intervention  of  a  Supreme  Dis- 
poser of  events  in  the  government  of  the  world, — 
"insignem  attenuans,  obscura  promens"  (Odes,  I.  34): — 

"  The  mighty  ones  of  earth  o'erthrowing, 
Advancing  the  obscure  ; — 

and  to  whose  "  pure  eyes  and  perfect  witness "  a 
blameless  life  and  a  conscience  void  of  offence  were 
not  indifferent. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

HORACE'S   POEMS   TO   HIS   FRIENDS.— HIS   PRAISES  OF 

CONTENTMENT. 

If  it  "be  merely  the  poet,  and  not  the  lover,  whc 
speaks  in  most  of  Horace's  love  verses,  there  can  never 
be  any  doubt  that  the  poems  to  his  friends  come 
direct  from  his  heart.  They  glow  with  feeling.  To 
whatever  chord  they  are  attuned,  sad,  or  solemn,  or 
joyous,  they  are  always  delightful;  consummate  in 
their  grace  of  expression,  while  they  have  all  the 
warmth  and  easy  now  of  spontaneous  emotion.  Take, 
for  example,  the  following  (Odes,  II.  7).  Pompeius 
Varus,  a  fellow-student  with  Horace  at  Athens,  and  a 
brother  in  arms  under  Brutus,  who,  after  the  defeat  of 
Philippi,  had  joined  the  party  of  the  younger  Pompey, 
has  returned  to  Eome,  profiting  probably  by  the  gene- 
ral amnesty  granted  by  Octavius  to  his  adversaries 
after  the  battle  of  Actium.  How  his  heart  must  have 
leapt  at  such  a  welcome  from  his  poet -friend  as 
this  !— 

"  Dear  comrade  in  the  days  when  thou  and  I 
With  Brutus  took  the  field,  his  perils  bore, 


136  HORACE. 

Who  liatli  restored  thee,  freely  as  of  yore, 
To  thy  home  gods,  and  loved  Italian  sky, 

"  Pompey,  who  wert  the  first  my  heart  to  share, 
With  whom  full  oft  I've  sped  the  lingering  day, 
Quaffing  bright  wine,  as  in  our  tents  we  lay, 
With  Syrian  spikenard  on  our  glistening  hair  ? 

"  With  thee  I  shared  Philippi's  headlong  flight, 
My  shield  behind  me  left,  which  was  not  well, 
When  all  that  brave  array  was  broke,  and  fell 
In  the  vile  dust  full  many  a  towering  wight. 

"  But  me,  poor  trembler,  swift  Mercurius  bore, 

Wrapped  in  a  cloud,  through  all  the  hostile  din, 
Whilst  war's  tumultuous  eddies,  closing  in, 
Swept  thee  away  into  the  strife  once  more. 

"  Then  pay  to  Jove  the  feasts  that  are  his  fee, 

And  stretch  at  ease  these  war-worn  limbs  of  thine 
Beneath  my  laurel's  shade  ;  nor  spare  the  wine 
Which  I  have  treasured  through  long  years  for  thee. 

"  Pour  till  it  touch  the  shining  goblet's  rim, 

Care-drowning  Massic;  let  rich  ointments  flow 
From  amplest  conchs !    No  measure  we  shall  know* 
What !  shall  we  wreaths  of  oozy  parsley  trim, 

"  Or  simple  myrtle  ?     Whom  will  Venus*  send 

To  rule  our  revel  ?     Wild  my  draughts  shall  be 
As  Thracian  Bacchanals',  for  'tis  sweet  to  me 
To  lose  my  wits,  when  I  regain  my  friend." 

"When   Horace   penned    the    playful   allusion    hero 

*  Venus  was  tbe  highest  cast  of  the  dice.  The  meaning  here 
is,  Who  shall  be  the  master  of  our  feast?— that  office  lulling  to 
the  member  of  the  wine-party  who  threw  sixes. 


ODE  TO  SEPTIMIVS.  137 

made  to  having  left  his  shield  on  the  field  of  "battle 
(parmuJd  non  bene  relicta),  he  could  never  have 
thought  that  his  commentators — professed  admirers, 
too — would  extract  from  it  an  admission  of  personal 
cowardice.  As  if  any  man,  much  more  a  Roman  to 
Romans,  would  make  such  a  confession !  Horace  could 
obviously  afford  to  put  in  this  way  the  fact  of  his  having 
given  up  a  desperate  cause,  for  this  very  reason,  that  he 
had  done  his  duty  on  the  field  of  Philippi,  and  that 
it  was  known  he  had  done  it.  Commentators  will  be 
so  cruelly  prosaic  !  The  poet  was  quite  as  serious  in 
saying  that  Mercury  carried  him  out  of  the  melee  in  a 
cloud,  like  one  of  Homer's  heroes,  as  that  he  had  left 
his  shield  discreditably  (non  bene)  on  the  battle-field. 
But  it  requires  a  poetic  sympathy,  which  in  classical 
editors  is  rare,  to  understand  that,  as  Lessing  and 
others  have  urged,  the  very  way  he  speaks  of  his  own 
retreat  was  by  implication  a  compliment,  not  ungrace- 
ful, to  his  friend,  who  had  continued  the  struggle 
against  the  triumvirate,  and  come  home  at  last,  war- 
worn  and  weary,  to  find  the  more  politic  comrade  of 
his  youth  one  of  the  celebrities  of  Rome,  and  on  the 
best  of  terms  with  the  very  men  against  whom  they 
had  once  fought  side  by  side. 

Not  less  beautiful  is  the  following  Ode  to  Septim- 
ins,  another  of  the  poet's  old  companions  in  arms 
(Odes,  II.  6).  His  speaking  of  himself  in  it  as  "with 
war  and  travel  worn"  has  puzzled  the  commenta- 
tors, as  it  is  plain  from  the  rest  of  the  poem  that  it 
must  have  been  written  long  after  his  campaigning 
days  were  past.     But  the  fatigues  of  those  days  may 


138  HORACE. 

have  left  their  traces  for  many  years  \  and  the  diffi- 
culty is  at  once  got  over  if  we  suppose  the  poem  to 
have  been  written  under  some  little  depression  from 
languid  health  due  to  this  cause.  Tarentum,  where  his 
friend  lived,  and  whose  praises  are  so  warmly  sung,  was 
a  favourite  resort  of  the  poet's.  He  used  to  ride  there 
(p.  65)  on  his  mule,  very  possibly  to  visit  Septi- 
mius,  before  he  had  his  own  Sabine  villa;  and  all  his 
love  for  that  villa  never  chilled  his  admiration  for 
Tibur,  with  its  "  silvan  shades,  and  orchards  moist 
with  wimpling  rills,"  —  the  "  Til/wni  lucus,  et  uda 
mob'dlbus  pomaria  rivis," — and  its  milder  climate,  so 
genial  to  his  sun-loving  temperament :  — 

"  Septimius,  thou  who  wouldst,  I  know, 
With  me  to  distant  Gades  go, 
And  visit  the  Cantabrian  fell, 
"Whom  all  our  triumphs  cannot  quell, 
And  even  the  sands  barbarian  brave, 
Where  ceaseless  seethes  the  Moorish  wave  ; 

"  May  Tibur,  that  delightful  haunt, 
Reared  by  an  Argive  emigrant, 
The  tranquil  haven  be,  I  pray, 
For  my  old  age  to  wear  away ; 
Oh,  may  it  be  the  final  bourne 
To  one  with  war  and  travel  worn  ! 

"  But  should  the  cruel  fates  decree 
That  this,  my  friend,  shall  never  be, 
Then  to  Galsesus,  river  sweet 
To  skin-clad  flocks,  will  I  retreat, 
And  those  rich  mends,  where  sway  of  yora 
Laconian  Phalanthus  bore. 


ODE  TO  SEPTIMIUS.  139 

u  In  all  the  world  no  spot  there  is, 
That  wears  for  me  a  smile  like  this, 
The  honey  of  whose  thymy  fields 
May  vie  with  what  Hymettus  yields, 
Where  berries  clustering  every  slope 
May  with  Venafruni's  greenest  cope. 

"  There  Jove  accords  a  lengthened  spring, 
And  winters  wanting  winter's  sting, 
And  sunny  Aulon's*  broad  incline 
Such  mettle  puts  into  the  vine, 
Its  clusters  need  not  envy  those 
Which  fiery  Falernum  grows. 

"  Thyself  and  me  that  spot  invites, 
Those  pleasant  fields,  those  sunny  heights  ; 
And  there,  to  life's  last  moments  true, 
Wilt  thou  with  some  fond  tears  bedew — 
The  last  sad  tribute  love  can  lend — 
The  ashes  of  thy  poet-friend." 

Septimius  was  himself  a  poet,  or  thought  himsell 
one,  who, 

"  Holding  vulgar  ponds  and  runnels  cheap, 
At  Pindar's  fount  drank  valiantly  and  deep," 

as  Horace  says  of  him  in  an  Epistle  (I.  3)  to  Julius 
Florus ;  adding,  with  a  sly  touch  of  humour,  which 
throws  more  than  a  doubt  on  the  poetic  powers  of 
their  common  friend, — 

"  Thinks  he  of  me  ?     And  does  he  still  aspire 
To  marry  Theban  strains  to  Latium's  lyre, 
Thanks  to  the  favouring  muse  ?     Or  haply  rage 
And  mouth  in  bombast  for  the  tragic  stage  ? " 

*  Galaesus  (Galaso),  a  river  ;  Aulon,  a  hill  near  Tarentum 


140  HORACE. 

When  this  was  written  Septimius  was  in  Armenia 
along  with  Floras,  on  the  staff  of  Tiberius  Claudius 
Nero,  the  future  emperor.  For  this  appointment  he 
was  probably  indebted  to  Horace,  who  applied  for  it, 
at  his  request,  in  the  following  Epistle  to  Tiberius 
(L  9),  which  Addison  ('Spectator,'  493)  cites  as  a 
tine  specimen  of  what  a  letter  of  introduction  should 
be.  Horace  was,  on  principle,  wisely  chary  of  giving 
such  introductions. 

"  Look  round  and  round  the  man  you  recommend, 
For  yours  will  be  the  shame  if  he  offend,"  (C.) 

is  his  maxim  on  this  subject  (Epistles,  I.  18,  76); 
and  he  was  sure  to  be  especially  scrupulous  in  writing 
to  Tiberius,  who,  even  in  his  youth — and  he  was  at  this 
time  about  twenty- two — was  so  morose  and  unpleas- 
ant in  his  manners,  to  say  nothing  of  his  ample  share 
of  the  hereditary  pride  of  the  Claudian  family,  that 
even  Augustus  felt  under  constraint  in  his  company  : — 

"  Septimius  only  understands,  'twould  seem, 
How  high  1  stand  in,  Claudius,  your  esteem  : 
For  when  he  begs  and  prays  me,  day  by  day, 
Before  you  his  good  qualities  to  lay, 
As  not  unfit  the  heart  and  home  to  share 
Of  Nero,  who  selects  his  friends  with  care  ; 
When  he  supposes  you  to  me  extend 
The  rights  and  place  of  a  familiar  friend, 
Far  better  than  myself  he  sees  and  knows, 
How  far  with  you  my  commendation  goes. 
Pleas  without  number  T  protest  I've  used, 
In  hope  he'd  hold  me  from  the  task  excused, 
Yet  feared  the  while  it  might  be  thought  I  feigned 
Too  low  the  influence  I  perchance  have  gained, 


ICC  I  US  THE  PHILOSOPHER.  HI 

Dissembling  it  as  nothing  with  my  friends, 
To  keep  it  for  my  own  peculiar  ends. 
So,  to  escape  such  dread  reproach,  I  put 
My  blushes  by,  and  boldly  urge  my  suit. 
If  then  you  hold  it  as  a  grace,  though  small, 
To  doff  one's  baslifulness  at  friendship's  call, 
Enrol  him  in  your  suite,  assured  you'll  find 
b.  man  of  heart  in  him,  as  well  as  mind." 

v%  a  may  be  very  sure  that,  among  the  many  pleas 
u  ^i  oy  Horace  for  not  giving  Septimius  the  intro- 
duction he  desired,  was  the  folly  of  leaving  his  delight- 
ful retieat  at  Tarentum  to  go  once  more  abroad  in 
search  or  wealth  or  promotion.  Let  others  "  cross,  to 
plunder  provinces,  the  main,"  surely  this  was  no 
ambition  for  an  embryo  Pindar  or  half-developed  JEs- 
clivlus.  Horace  had  tried  similar  remonstrances  before, 
and  with  just  as  little  success,  upon  Iccius,  another  of 
his  scholarly  friends,  who  sold  off  his  fine  library  and 
joined  an  expedition  into  Arabia  Felix,  expecting  to 
find  it  an  FA  Dorado.  He  playfully  asks  this  studi- 
ous friend  (Odes,  I.  29),  from  whom  he  expected 
better  things  —  "pollicitus  meliora  "  —  if  it  be  true 
that  he  grudges  the  Arabs  their  wealth,  and  is  actu- 
ally forging  fetters  for  the  hitherto  invincible  Sabsean 
nionarchs,  and  those  terrible  Medians'?  To  which  of 
the  royal  damsels  does  he  intend  to  throw  the  hand- 
kerchief, having  first  cut  down  her  princely  betrothed 
in  single  combat  ?  Or  what  young  "  oiled  and  curled  " 
Oriental  prince  is  for  the  future  to  pour  out  his  wine 
for  him  1  Iccius,  like  many  another  Raleigh,  went 
out  to  gather  wool,  and  came  back  shorn.  The  expe- 
dition proved  disastrous,  and  he  was  lucky  in  being 


142  HORACE. 

one  of  the  few  who  survived  it.  Some  years  after- 
wards we  meet  with  him  again  as  the  steward  of 
Agrippa's  great  estates  in  Sicily.  He  has  resumed 
his  studies, — 

"  On  themes  sublime  alone  intent, — 
What  causes  the  wild  ocean  sway, 
The  seasons  what  from  June  to  May, 
If  free  the  constellations  roll, 
Or  moved  by  some  supreme  control ; 
"What  makes  the  moon  obscure  her  light, 
What  pours  her  splendour  on  the  night." 

Absorbed  in  these  and  similar  inquiries,  and  living 
happily  on  "  herbs  and  frugal  fare,"  Iccius  realises  the 
noble  promise  of  his  youth  ;  and  Horace,  in  writing 
to  him  (Epist.,  I.  12),  encourages  him  in  his  disregard 
of  wealth  by  some  of  those  hints  for  contentment 
which  the  poet  never  tires  of  reproducing  : — 

"  Let  no  care  trouble  you  ;  for  poor 
That  man  is  not,  who  can  insure 
Whate'er  for  life  is  needful  found. 
Let  your  digestion  be  but  sound, 
Your  side  unwrung  by  spasm  or  stitch, 
Your  foot  unconscious  of  a  twitch  ; 
And  could  you  be  more  truly  blest, 
Though  of  the  wealth  of  kings  possessed  1 " 

It  must  have  been  pleasant  to  Horace  to  find  even 
one  among  his  friends  illustrating  in  his  life  this  mod- 
est Socratic  creed  ;  for  he  is  so  constantly  enforcing  it, 
in  every  variety  of  phrase  and  metaphor,  that  while 
we  must  conclude  that  he  regarded  it  as  the  one 
doctrine  most  needful  for  his  time,  we  must  equally 


M AM MOX- WORSHIP  IN  ROME.  143 

conclude  that  he  found  it  utterly  disregarded.  All  round 
him  wealth,  wealth,  wealth,  was  the  universal  aim  : 
wealth,  to  build  line  houses  in  town,  and  villas  at 
Praeneste  or  Baiie ;  wealth,  to  stock  them  with  statues, 
old  bronzes  (mostly  fabrications  from  the  Wardoiu 
Streets  of  Athens  or  Rome),  ivories,  pictures,  gold 
plate,  pottery,  tapestry,  stuns  from  the  looms  of  Tyre, 
and  other  articles  de  luxe;  wealth,  to  give  gorgeous 
dinners,  and  wash  them  down  with  the  costliest  wines; 
wealth,  to  provide  splendid  equipages,  to  forestall  the 
front  seats  in  the  theatre,  as  Ave  do  opera-boxes  on  the 
grand  tier,  and  so  get  a  few  yards  nearer  to  the  Em- 
peror's chair,  or  gain  a  closer  view  of  the  favourite 
actor  or  dancer  of  the  day  ;  wealth,  to  secure  a  wife 
with  a  fortune  and  a  pedigree  ;  wealth,  to  attract  gad- 
fly friends,  who  will  consume  your  time,  eat  your  din- 
ners, drink  your  wines,  and  then  abuse  them,  and 
who  will  with  amiable  candour  regale  their  circle  by 
quizzing  your  foibles,  or  slandering  your  taste,  if  they 
are  even  so  kind  as  to  spare  your  character.  "A 
dowried  wife,"  he  says  (Epistles,  I.  6), 

"  Friends,  beauty,  birth,  fair  fame, 
These  are  the  gifts  of  money,  heavenly  dame  ; 
Be  but  a  moneyed  man,  persuasion  tips 
Your  tongue,  and  Venus  settles  on  your  lips."  (C.) 

And   to  achieve  this   wealth,   no  sacrifice   was  to   be 

spared — time,  happiness,  health,  honour  itself.     "  Rem 

facias,  rem  !  Si  possis  recte,  si  non,  quocunque  modo 

rem    " — 

"  Get  raonev,  money  still, 
And  then  let  Virtue  follow,  if  she  will." 


144  HORACE. 

Wealth  sought  in  this  spirit,  and  for  such  ends,  of 
course  brought  no  more  enjoyment  to  the  contempor- 
aries of  Horace  than  we  see  it  doincr  to  our  own.  And 
not  the  least  evil  of  the  prevailing  mania,  then  as 
now,  was,  that  it  robbed  life  of  its  simplicity,  and  of 
the  homely  friendliness  on  which  so  much  of  its  pleas- 
ure depends.  People  lived  for  show — to  propitiate 
others,  not  to  satisfy  their  own  better  instincts  or 
their  genuine  convictions ;  and  straining  after  the 
shadow  of  enjoyment,  they  let  the  reality  slip  from 
their  grasp.  They  never  "  were,  but  always  to  be, 
blest."  It  was  the  old  story,  which  the  world  is 
continually  re-enacting,  wdiile  the  sage  stands  by,  and 
marvels  at  its  folly,  and  preaches  what  we  call  com- 
monplaces, in  a  vain  endeavour  to  modify  or  to  pre- 
vent it.  But  the  wisdom  of  life  consists  of  common- 
places, which  we  should  all  be  much  the  better  for  work- 
ing into  our  practice,  instead  of  complacently  sneering 
at  them  as  platitudes.  Horace  abounds  in  common- 
places, and  on  no  theme  more  than  this.  He  has  no 
divine  law  of  duty  to  appeal  to,  as  we  have — no  as- 
sured hereafter  to  which  he  may  point  the  minds  of 
men  ;  but  he  presses  strongly  home  their  folly,  in  so 
far  as  this  world  is  concerned.  To  what  good,  he  asks, 
all  this  turmoil  and  disquiet?  No  man  truly  possesses 
more  than  he  is  able  thoroughly  to  enjoy.  Grant  that 
you  roll  in  gold,  or,  by  accumulating  land,  become,  in 
Hamlet's  phrase,  "  spacious  in  the  possession  of  dirt." 
What  pleasure  will  you  extract  from  these,  which  a 
moderate  estate  will  not  yield  in  equal,  if  not  greater, 
measure  ]     You  fret  yourself  to  acquire  your  wealth — 


HOW  TO  LIVE.  145 

you  fret  yourself  lest  you  should  lose  it.  It  robs  you 
of  your  health,  your  ease  of  mind,  your  freedom  of 
thought  and  action.  Riches  will  not  bribe  inexorable 
death  to  spare  you.  At  any  hour  that  great  leveller 
may  sweep  you  away  into  darkness  and  dust,  and  what 
will  it  then  avail  you,  that  you  have  wasted  all  your 
hours,  and  foregone  all  wholesome  pleasure,  in  adding 
ingot  to  ingot,  or  acre  to  acre,  for  your  heirs  to  squander? 
Set  a  bound,  then,  to  your  desires  :  think  not  of  how 
much  others  have,  but  of  how  much  which  they  have 
you  can  do  perfectly  well  without.  Be  not  the  slave 
of  show  or  circumstance,  "  but  in  yourself  possess 
your  own  desire."  Do  not  lose  the  present  in  vain  per- 
plexities about  the  future.  If  fortune  lours  to-day, 
she  may  smile  to-morrow ;  and  when  she  lavishes  her 
gifts  upon  you,  cherish  an  humble  heart,  and  so  fortify 
yourself  against  her  caprice.  Keep  a  rein  upon  all 
your  passions — upon  covetousness,  above  all;  for  once 
that  has  you  within  its  clutch,  farewell  for  ever  to  the 
light  heart  and  the  sleep  that  comes  unbidden,  to  the 
open  eye  that  drinks  in  delight  from  the  beauty  and 
freshness  and  infinite  variety  of  nature,  to  the  un- 
clouded mind  that  judges  justly  and  serenely  of  men 
and  things.  Enjoy  wisely,  for  then  only  you  enjoy 
thoroughly.  Live  each  day  as  though  it  were  your 
last.  Mar  not  your  life  by  a  hopeless  quarrel  with 
destiny.  It  will  be  only  too  brief  at  the  best,  and  the 
day  is  at  hand  when  its  inequalities  will  be  redressed, 
and  king  and  peasant,  pauper  and  millionaire,  be 
huddled,  poor  shivering  phantoms,  in  one  unclistinguish- 
able  crowd,  across  the  melancholy  Styx,  to  the  judg- 
a.  c.  vol.  vi.  K 


146  HORACE. 

meiit-hall  of  Minos.  To  tins  theme  many  of  Horace's 
finest  Odes  are  strung.  Of  these,  not  the  least  graceful 
is  that  addressed  to  Dellius  (II.  3) : — 

(t  Let  not  the  frowns  of  fate 
Disquiet  thee,  my  friend, 
Nor,  when  she  smiles  on  thee,  do  thou,  elate 
With  vaunting  thoughts,  ascend 
Beyond  the  limits  of  becoming  mirth  ; 
For,  Dellius,  thou  must  die,  become  a  clod  of  earth  ! 

"  "Whether  thy  days  go  down 
In  gloom,  and  dull  regrets, 
Or,  shunning  life's  vain  struggle  for  renown, 
Its  fever  and  its  frets, 

Stretch' d  on  the  grass,  with  old  Falernian  wine, 
Thou  giv'st  the  thoughtless  hours  a  rapture  all  divine. 

"  Where  the  tall  spreading  pine 
And  white-leaved  poplar  grow, 
And,  mingling  their  broad  boughs  in  leafy  twine, 
A  grateful  shadow  throw, 

Where  down  its  broken  bed  the  wimpling  stream 
Writhes   on  its  sinuous   way  with   many  a  quivering 
gleam, 

"  There  wine,  there  perfumes  bring, 
Bring  garlands  of  the  rose, 
Fair  and  too  shortlived  daughter  of  the  spring, 
While  youth's  bright  current  flows 
Within  thy  veins, — ere  yet  hath  come  the  hour 
When  the  dread  Sisters  Three  shall  clutch  thee  in  their 
power. 

"  Thy  woods,  thy  treasured  pride, 
Thy  mansion's  pleasant  seat, 
Thy  lawns  washed  by  the  Tiber's  yellow  tide, 
Each  favourite  retreat, 


ALL  EQUAL   hV  DEATH.  147 

Thou  must  leave  all — all,  and  thine  heir  shall  run 
In  riot  through  the  wealth  thy  years  of  toil  have  won. 

"  It  recks  not  whether  thou 
Be  opulent,  and  trace 

Thy  birth  from  kings,  or  bear  upon  thy  brow 
Stamp  of  a  beggar's  race  ; 
In  rags  or  splendour,  death  at  tnee  alike, 
That  no  compassion  hath  for  aught  of  earth,  will  strike. 

"  One  road,  and  to  one  bourne 
We  all  are  goaded.     Late 
Or  soon  will  issue  from  the  urn 
Of  unrelenting  Fate 
The  lot,  that  in  yon  bark  exiles  us  all 
To  undiscovered  shores,  from  which  is  no  recall." 

In  a  still  higher  strain  he  sings  (Odes,  III.  1)  the 
ultimate  equality  of  all  human  souls,  and  the  vanity 
of  encumbering  life  with  the  anxieties  of  ambition  or 
wealth  : — 

"  Whate'er  our  rank  may  be, 
We  all  partake  one  common  destiny  ! 

In  fair  expanse  of  soil, 
Teeming  with  rich  returns  of  wine  and  oil, 

His  neighbour  one  outvies  ; 

Another  claims  to  rise 

To  civic  dignities, 
Because  of  ancestry  and  noble  birth, 
Or  fame,  or  proved  pre-eminence  of  worth, 
Or  troops  of  clients,  clamorous  in  his  cause  ; 
Still  Fate  doth  grimly  stand, 
And  with  impartial  hand 
The  lots  of  lofty  and  of  lowly  draws 

From  that  capacious  urn 
Whence  every  name  that  lives  is  shaken  in  its  turn 


148  HORACE. 

"  To  him,  above  whose  guilty  head, 

Suspended  by  a  thread, 
The  naked  sword  is  hung  for  evermore, 

Not  feasts  Sicilian  shall 

"With  all  their  cates  recall 
That  zest  the  simplest  fare  could  once  inspire  ; 
Nor  song  of  birds,  nor  music  of  the  lyre 

Shall  his  lost  sleep  restore  : 

But  gentle  sleep  shuns  not 

The  rustic's  lowly  cot, 
Nor  mossy  bank  o'ercanopied  with  trees, 
Nor  Tempe's  leafy  vale  stirred  by  the  western  breeze. 

"  The  man  who  lives  content  with  whatsoe'er 

Sufficeth  for  his  needs, 
The  storm-tossed  ocean  vexetn  not  with  care, 
Nor  the  tierce  tempest  which  Arcturus  breeds, 

When  in  the  skv  he  sets, 
Nor  that  which  Hoedus,  at  his  rise,  begets  ■ 

Nor  will  he  grieve,  although 

His  vines  be  all  laid  low 
Beneath  the  driving  hail, 
Nor  though,  by  reason  of  the  drenching  rain, 

Or  heat,  that  shrivels  up  his  fields  like  fire, 

Oi  fierce  extremities  of  winter's  ire, 
Blight  shall  o'erwhelm  his  fruit-trees  and  his  grain, 

And  all  his  farm's  delusive  promise  fail. 

"  The  fish  are  conscious  that  a  narrower  bound 
Is  drawn  the  seas  around 
By  masses  huge  hurled  down  into  the  deep. 
There,  at  the  bidding  of  a  lord,  for  whom 
Not  all  the  land  he  owns  is  ample  room, 
Do  the  contractor  and  his  labourers  heap 
Vast  piles  of  stone,  the  ocean  back  to  sweep. 


OB,   SWEET  CONTENT  I  149 

But  let  him  climb  in  pride, 

That  lord  of  halls  unblest, 

Up  to  their  topmost  crest, 
Yet  ever  by  his  side 

Climb  Terror  and  Unrest ; 
Within  the  brazen  galley's  side? 

Care,  ever  wakeful,  flits, 
And  at  his  back,  when  forth  in  state  he  rideSj 

Her  withering  shadow  sits. 

"  If  thus  it  fore  with  all, 
If  neither  marbles  from  the  Phrygian  mine, 
Nor  star-bright  robes  of  purple  and  of  pall, 
Nor  the  Falernian  vine, 
Nor  costliest  balsams,  fetched  from  farthest  Ind, 
Can  soothe  the  restless  mind, 
Why  should  I  choose 
To  rear  on  high,  as  modern  spendthrifts  use, 
A  lofty  hall,  might  be  the  home  for  kings, 
With  portals  vast,  for  Malice  to  abuse, 
Or  Envy  make  her  theme  to  point  a  tale  ; 

Or  why  for  wealth,  which  new-born  trouble  brings 
Exchange  my  Sabine  vale  ? " 


CHAPTER    V1TT. 

PREVAILING  BELIEF  IN  A8TR0L00T.  HORACE'S  VIEWS  OF  A 
HEREAFTER.— RELATIONS  WITH  M^CENAS. — BELIEF  IN  THE 
PERMANENCE    OF    HIS    OWN    KAMI. 

"  When  all  looks  fair  about,"  says  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  "and  thou  seest  not  a  cloud  so  big  as  a  hand 
fco  threaten  thee,  forget  not  the  wheel  of  things ;  think 
of  sudden  vicissitudes,  but  beat  not  thy  brains  to 
foreknow  them."  It  was  characteristic  of  an  age  of 
Luxury  (hat.  it  should  be  one  of  superstition  and  men- 
ial disquietude,  eager  to  penetrate  the  future,  and 
credulous  in  its  belief  of  those  who  pretended  to 
unveil  its  pecrets.  En  such  an  age  astrology  naturally 
found  many  dupes.  Rome  was  infested  with  profes- 
sors of  that  so-called  science,  who  had  flocked  thither 
from  the  East,  and  were  always  ready,  like  other 
oracles,  to  supply  responses  acceptable  to  their  votaries. 
In  what  contempt  Horace  lield  their  prognostications 
the  following  Ode  (1.  11)  very  clearly  indicates.  The 
women  of  Rome,  according  to  Juvenal,  wore  great 
believers  in  astrology,  and  carried  manuals  of  it  on 
their  persons,  which  they  consulted  before  they  took 
an  airing  or  broke  their  fast.     Possibly  on  this  account 


ODE   TO  LEUCOXOE.  151 

Horace  addressed  the  ode  to  a  lady.  But  in  such 
tilings,  and  not  under  the  Roman  Empire  only,  there 
have  always  been,  as  La  Fontaine  says,  "bon  nombre 
cChomines  qui  sont  femmes."  If  Augustus,  and  his  great 
goneral  and  statesman  Agrippa,  had  a  Theogenes  t*. 
forecast  their  fortunes,  so  the  first  Napoleon  had  his 
"Madame  Lenormand. 

"Ask  not — such  lore's  forbidden — 
What  destined  term  may  be 
Within  the  future  hidden 
For  us,  Leuconoe. 
Both  thou  and  I 
Must  quickly  die  ! 
Content  thee,  then,  nor  madly  Hope 
To  wrest  a  false  assurance  from  Chaldean  horoscope. 

"  Far  nobler,  better  were  it, 
Whate'er  may  be  in  store, 
With  soul  serene  to  bear  it, 
If  winters  many  more 
Jove  spare  lor  thee,   • 
Or  this  shall  be 
The  last,  that  now  with  sullen  roar 

Scatters  the  Tuscan  surge  in  loam  upon  the  rock-bouna 
shore. 

"Be,  wise,  your  spirit  firing 

With  cups  of  tempered  wine, 
And  hopes  afar  aspiring 
In  compass  brief  confine, 
Use  all  life's  powers  ; 
The  envious  hours 
Fly  as  we  talk  ;  then  live  to-day, 
Nor  fondly  to  to-morrow  trust  more  than  you  must  or  may." 


152  Horace. 

In  the  verses  of  Horace  we  are  perpetually  reminds 
that  our  life  is  compassed  round  with  darkness,  but  he 
will  not  suffer  this  darkness  to  overshadow  his  cheer- 
fulness. On  the  contrary,  the  beautiful  world,  and 
the  delights  it  offers,  are  made  to  stand  out,  as  it  were, 
in  brighter  relief  against  the  gloom  of  Orcus.  Thus, 
for  example,  this  very  gloom  is  made  the  background 
in  fhe  following  Ode  (I.  4)  for  the  brilliant  pictures 
which  crowd  on  the  poet's  fancy  with  the  first  burst 
of  Spring.  Here,  lie  says,  oh  Sestius,  all  is  fresh  and 
joyous,  luxuriant  and  lovely  !  Be  happy,  drink  in 
"  at  every  pore  the  spirit  of  the  season,"  while  the 
roses  are  fresh  within  your  hair,  and  the  wine-cup 
flashes  ruby  in  your  hand.  Yonder  lies  Pluto's 
meagrely- appointed  mansion,  and  filmy  shadows  of 
the  dead  are  waiting  for  you  there,  to  swell  their 
joyless  ranks.  To  that  unlovely  region  you  must  go, 
alas  '  too  soon  ;  but  the  golden  present  is  yours,  so 
drain  it  of  its  sweets. 

"  As  biting  Winter  flies,  lo  !  Spring  with  sunny  skies, 
And  balmy  airs  ;  and  barks  long  dry  put  out  again  from 
shore  ; 
Now  the  ox  forsakes  his  byre,  and  the  husbandman  his  fire, 
And  daisy-dappled  meadows  bloom  where  winter  frosts 
lay  hoar. 

"By  Cvtherea  led,  while  the  moon  shines  overhead, 

The  Nymphs  and  Graces,  hand-in-hand,  with  alternating 
feet 
Shake   the  ground,  while    swmking  Vulcan   strikes    the 
sparkles  fieiv e  and  red 
From  the  forges  of  the  Cyclops,  with  reiterated  beat. 


1/OW  THE  ANCIENTS    VIEWED  DEATH.      153 

"  'T„  the  time  with  myrtle  green  to  bind  our  glistening  locks, 
Or  with  flowers,  wherein  the  loosened  earth  herself  hath 
newly  dressed,. 

Acd  to  sacrifice  to  Faunus  in  some  glade  amidst  the  rocks 
A  yearling  lamb  or  else  a  kid,  if  such  delight  him  best 

u  Death  comes  alike  to  all — to  the  monarch's  lordly  hall, 
Or  the  hovel  of  the  beggar,  and  his  summons  none  shall 
stay. 

Oh,  Sestius,  happy  Sestius  !  use  tne  moments  as  they  pass ; 
Far-reaching  hopes  are  not  for  us,  the  creatures  of  a  day. 

"  Thee  soon  shall  night  enshroud ;  and  the  Manes'  phantom 
crowd, 
And    the   starveling  house  unbeautiful  of    Pluto  shut 
thee  in  ; 
And  thou  shalt  not  banish  care  by  the  ruddy  wine-cup  there, 
Nor  woo  the  gentle  Lvcidas,  whom  all  are  mad  to  win." 

A  modern  would  no  more  think  of  using  such 
images  as  those  of  the  last  two  verses  to  stimulate  the 
festivity  of  his  friends  than  he  would  of  placing,  like 
the  old  Eg}rptians,  a  skull  upon  his  dinner-table,  or  of 
decorating  his  ball-room  with  Holbein's  "  Dance  of 
Death."  We  rebuke  our  pride  or  keep  our  vanities 
in  check  by  the  thought  of  death,  and  our  poets  use 
it  to  remind  us  that 

"  The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state 

Are  shadows,  not  substantial  things." 

Horace  does  this  too  ;  but  out  of  the  sad  certainty  of 
mortality  he  seems  to  extract  a  keener  zest  for  the  too 
Drief  enjoyment  of  the  flying  hours.  Why  is  this1? 
Probably  because  by  the  pagan  mind  life  on  this  side 
the  grave  was  regarded  as  a  thing  more  precious,  more 


154  HORACE. 

noble,  than  the  life  beyond.  That  there  was  a  life 
beyond  was  undoubtedly  the  general  belief.  "  Sunt 
<iliquid  Manes;  lefumuon  omnia •  Jinit,  Luridaque  evictos 
e fur/ it  umbra  rogos" — 

"  The  Manes  are  no  dream  ;  death  closes  not 
Our  all  of  being,  and  the  wan-visaged  shade 
Escapes  unscathed  from  the  funereal  tires," 

says  Propertius  (Eleg.  IV.  7) ;  and  unless  this  were  so, 
there  would  be  no  meaning  whatever  in  the  whole 
pagan  idea  of  Hades — in  the  "  domus  exit  is  Plutoida;" 
in  the  Hermes  driving  the  spirits  of  the  dead  across 
the  Styx ;  in  the  "judicantem  sEacum,  sedesque  dis- 
cretes piorum" — the  "  /Eacus  dispensing  doom,  and 
the  Elysian  Fields  serene"  (Odes,  II.  13).  But  this 
after-life  was  a  cold,  sunless,  unsubstantial  thing, 
lower  in  quality  and  degree  than  the  full,  vigorous, 
passionate  life  of  this  world.  The  nobler  spirits  of 
antiquity,  it  hardly  need  be  said,  had  higher  dreams  of 
a  future  state  than  this.  For  them,  no  more  than  for 
us,  was  it  possible  to  rest  in  the  conviction  that  their 
brief  and  troubled  career  on  earth  was  to  be  the  "  be  all 
and  the  end  all"  of  existence,  or  that  those  whom 
they  had  loved  and  lost  in  death  became  thenceforth 
as  though  they  had  never  been.  At  is  idle  to  draw, 
as  is  often  done,  a  different  conclusion  from  such 
phrases  as  that  after  death  we  are  a  shadow  and  mere 
dust,  " pulvis  et  umbra  surnuslr  or  from  Horace's 
bewildered  cry  (Odes,  I.  24),  when  a  friend  of  signal 
nobleness  and  purity  is  suddenly  struck  down — "Ergo 
Qui  net  ilium  perpetuus  soqior  ztrget?" — "And  is  Quinc- 


BELIEF  IN  IMMORTALITY.  155 

tilius,  then,  weighed  down  by  a  sleep  that  knows  no 
waking  ?  "  We  might  as  reasonably  argue  that  Shake- 
speare did  not  believe  in  a  life  after  death  because  he 
makes  Prospero  say — 

"  We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep." 

Horace  and  Shakespeare  both  believed  in  an  immor- 
tality, but  it  was  an  immortality  different  in  its  kind. 
Horace,  indeed, — who,  as  a  rule,  is  wisely  silent  on  a 
question  which  for  him  had  no  solution,  however 
much  it  may  have  engaged  his  speculations, — has 
gleams  not  unlike  those  which  irradiate  our  happier 
creed,  as  when  he  writes  (Odes,  III.  2)  of  "  Virtus,  re- 
cludens  immeritis  mori  ccehun,  negata  tentat  iter  via  " — 

"  "Worth,  which  heaven's  gates  to  those  unbars 
Who  never  should  have  died, 
A  pathway  cleaves  among  the  stars, 
To  meaner  souls  denied." 

But  they  are  only  gleams,  impassioned  hopes,  yearn- 
ings of  the  unsatisfied  soul  in  its  search  for  some  solu- 
tion of  the  great  mystery  of  life.  To  him,  therefore, 
it  was  of  more  moment  than  it  was  to. us,  to  make  the 
most  of  the  present,  and  to  stimulate  his  relish  for 
what  it  has  to  give  by  contrasting  it  with  a  phantas- 
mal future,  in  which  no  single  faculty  of  enjoyment 
should  be  left. 

Take  from  life  the  time  spent  in  hopes  or  fears  or 
regrets,  and  how  small  the  residue  !  For  the  same 
reason,  therefore,  that  he  prized  life  intensely,  Horace 


156  HORACE. 

seems  to  have  resolved  to  keep  these  consumers  of  ita 
hours  as  much  at  hay  as  possible.  He  would  riot  look 
too  far  forward  even  for  a  pleasure ;  for  Hope,  he 
knew,  comes  never  unaccompanied  by  her  twin  sister 
Fear.  Like  the  Persian  poet,  Omar  Khayyam,  this  is 
ever  in  his  thoughts — 

"  What  hoots  it  to  repeat, 
How  Time  is  slipping  underneath  our  feet  ? 
Unborn  To-morrow,  and  dead  Yesterday, 
Why  fret  about  them  if  To-day  be  sweet  ?  " 

To-day — that  alone  is  ours.  Let  us  welcome  and 
note  what  it  brings,  and,  if  good,  enjoy  it ;  if  evil, 
endure.  Let  us,  in  any  case,  keep  our  eyes  and  senses 
open,  and  not  lose  their  impressions  in  dreaming  of 
an  irretrievable  past  or  of  an  impenetrable  future. 
"  Write  it  on  your  heart,"  says  Emerson  ('  Society  and 
Solitude '),  "  that  every  day  is  the  best  day  in  the 
year.  ]STo  man  has  learned  anything  rightly  until  he 
knows  that  every  day  is  Doomsday.  .  .  .  Ah, 
poor  dupe  !  will  you  never  learn  that  as  soon  as  the 
irrecoverable  years  have  woven  their  blue  glories  be- 
tween To-day  and  us,  these  passing  hours  shall  glitter, 
and  draw  us,  as  the  wildest  romance  and  the  homes 
of  beauty  and  poetry  %  "  Horace  would  have  hailed  a 
brother  in  the  philosopher  of  New  England. 

Even  in  inviting  MoBceiiiU?  to  his  Sabine  farm  (Odes, 
III.  29).  he  does  not  think  it  out  of  place  to  remind 
the  minister  of  state,  worn  with  the  cares  of  govern- 
ment, and  looking  restlessly  ahead  to  anticipate  its 
difficulties,  that  it  may,  after  all,  be  wiser  not  to  look 


INVITATION  TO  MAECENAS.  157 

so  far  ahead,  or  to  trouble  himself  about  contingencies 
which  may  never  arise.  We  must  not  think  that 
Horace  undervalued  that  essential  quality  of  true 
statesmanship,  the  "animus  rerum  xjrudens'"  (Odes, 
IV.  9),  the  forecasting  spirit  that  "looks  into  the 
seeds  of  Time,"  and  reads  the  issues  of  events  while 
they  are  still  far  off.  He  saw  and  prized  the  splendid 
fruits  of  the  exercise  of  this  very  power  in  the  growing 
tranquillity  and  strength  of  the  Roman  empire.  But 
the  wisest  may  over-study  a  subject. .  Maecenas  may 
have  been  working  too  hard,  and  losing  under  the 
pressure  something  of  his  usual  calmness  ;  and  Horace, 
while  urging  him  to  escape  from  town  for  a  few  days, 
may  have  had  it  in  view  to  insinuate  the  suggestion, 
that  Jove  smiles,  not  at  the  common  mortal  merely, 
but  even  at  the  sagacious  statesman,  who  is  over-anxi- 
ous about  the  future — "  ultra  fas  tr&pidat " — and  to 
remind  him  that,  after  all, 

"  There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 
Rough-hew  them  how  we  may." 

Dry  den's  splendid  paraphrase  of  this  Ode  is  one  of  the 
glories  of  our  literature,  but  it  is  a  paraphrase,  and  a 
version  closer  to  the  original  may  be  more  appropriate 
here  :■  — 

"  Scion  of  Tuscan  kings,  in  store 

I've  laid  a  cask  of  mellow  wine, 
That  never  has  been  broached  before. 

I've  roses,  too,  for  wreaths  to  twine, 
And  Nubian  nut,  that  for  thy  hair 
An  oil  shall  yield  of  fragrance  rare. 


158  HORACE. 

"  The  plenty  quit,  that  only  palls, 

And,  turning  from  the  cloud-capped  pile 
That  towers  above  thy  palace  halls, 

Forget  to  worship  for  a  while 
The  privileges  Rome  enjoys, 
Her  smoke,  her  splendour,  and  her  noise. 

"  It  is  the  rich  who  relish  Lest 

To  dwell  at  times  from  state  aloof  ; 
And  simple  suppers,  neatly  dressed, 

Beneath  a  poor  man's  humble  roof, 
With  neither  pail  nor  purple  there, 
Have  smoothed  ere  now  the  brow  of  care. 


"  Now  with  his  spent  and  languid  flocks 
The  wearied  shepherd  seeks  the  shade, 

The  river  cool,  the  shaggy  rocks, 
That  overhang  the  tangled  glade, 

And  bv  the  stream  no  breeze's  gush 

Disturbs  the  universal  hush. 

u  Thou  dost  devise  with  sleepless  zeal 

What  course  may  best  the  state  beseem, 

And,  fearful  for  the  City's  weal, 

Weigh'st  anxiously  each  hostile  scheme 

That  may  be  hatching  far  away 

In  Scythia,  India,  or  Cathay. 

"  Most  wisely  Jove  in  thickest  night 
The  issues  of  the  future  veils, 
And  laughs  at  the  self-torturing  wight 

Who  with  imagined  terrors  quails. 
The  present  only  is  thine  own, 
Then  use  it  well,  ere  it  has  flown. 

"All  else  which  may  by  time  be  bred 
Is  like  a  river  of  the  plain, 


ODE  TO  MAECENAS.  159 

Now  gliding  gently  o'er  its  bed 
Along  to  the  Etruscan  main, 
Now  whirling  onwards,  fierce  and  fast, 
Uprooted  trees,  and  boulders  vast, 

"  And  flocks,  and  houses,  all  in  drear 
Confusion  tossed  from  shore  to  shore, 

"While  mountains  far,  and  forests  near 
Reverberate  the  rising  roar, 

When  lashing  rains  among  the  hills 

To  fury  wake  the  quiet  rills. 

"  Lord  of  himself  that  man  will  be, 

And  happy  in  his  life  alway, 
Who  still  at  eve  can  sav  with  free 

Contented  soul,  '  I've  lived  to-day  ! 
Let  Jove  to-morrow,  if  he  will, 
With  blackest  clouds  the  welkin  fill, 

"  '  Or  flood  it  all  with  sunlight  pure, 
Yet  from  the  past  he  cannot  take 
Its  influence,  for  that  is  sure, 

Nor  can  he  mar  or  bootless  make 
Whate'er  of  rapture  and  delight 
The  hours  have  borne  us  in  their  flight.' " 


o' 


The  poet  here  passes,  by  one  of  those  sudden  transi- 
tions for  which  he  is  remarkable,  into  the  topic  of  the 
fickleness  of  fortune,  which  seems  to  have  no  imme- 
diate connection  with  what  has  gone  before, — but  only 
seems,  for  this  very  fickleness  is  but  a  fresh  reason  fur 
making  ourselves,  by  self-possession  and  a  just  estimate 
of  what  is  essential  to  happiness,  independent  of  the 
accidents  of  time  or  chance. 


1G0  HORACE. 

"  Fortune,  who  with  malicious  glee 

Her  merciless  vocation  plies, 
Benignly  smiling  now  on  me, 

Now  on  another,  bids  him  rise, 
And  in  mere  wantonness. of  whim 
Her  favours  shifts  from  me  to  him. 

"  I  laud  her  whilst  by  me  she  holds, 
But  if  she  spread  her  pinions  swift, 

I  wrap  me  in  my  virtue's  folds, 
And,  yielding  back  her  every  gift, 

Take  refuge  in  the  life  so  free 

Of  bare  but  honest  poverty. 

"  You  will  not  find  me,  when  the  mast 

Groans  'neath  the  stress  of  southern  gales, 
To  wretched  prayers  rush  off,  nor  cast 

Vows  to  the  great  gods,  lest  my  bales 
From  Tyre  or  Cyprus  sink,  to  be 
Fresh  booty  for  the  hungry  sea. 

"  When  others  then  in  wild  despair 

To  save  their  cumbrous  wealth  essay, 
I  to  the  vessel's  skiff  repair, 

And,  whilst  the  Twin  Stars  light  my  way, 
Safely  the  breeze  my  little  craft 
Shall  o'er  the  iEgean  billows  waft." 


-cr 


Ma3cenas  was  of  a  melancholy  temperament,  and 
liable  to  great  depression  of  spirits.  Not  only  was 
his  health  at  no  time  robust,  but  he  was  constitution- 
ally prone  to  i\'\'cr,  which  more  than  once  proved 
nearly  fatal  to  him.  On  his  first  appearance  in  the 
theatre  after  one  of  these  dangerous  attacks,  he  was 
received  with  vehement  cheers,  and  Horace  alludes 
twice  to  this  incident  in  his  Odes,  as  if  he  knew  that 


POPULARITY  OF  MAECENAS.  161 

it  had  given  especial  pleasure  to  his  friend.  To  mark 
tlie  event  the  poet  laid  up  in  his  cellar  a  jar  of  Sabine 
wine,  and  some  jrears  afterwards  he  invites  Maecenas 
to  come  and  partake  of  it  in  this  charmiug  lyric  (Odes, 
I.  20)  :— 

"  Our  common  Sabine  wine  shall  be 
The  only  drink  I'll  give  to  thee, 

In  modest  goblets,  too  ; 
'Twas  stored  in  crock  of  Grecian  del£ 
Dear  knight  Maecenas,  by  myself, 

That  very  day  when  through 
The  theatre  thy  plaudits  rang, 
And  sportive  echo  caught  the  clang, 

And  answered  from  the  banks 
Of  thine  own  dear  paternal  stream, 
Whilst  Vatican  renewed  the  theme 

Of  homage  and  of  thanks  ! 
Old  Caecnban,  the  very  best, 
And  juice  in  vats  Calenian  pressed, 

You  drink  at  home,  I  know  : 
My  cups  no  choice  Falernian  fills, 
Nor  unto  them  do  Formise's  hills 

Impart  a  tempered  glow." 

About  the  same  time  that  Maecenas  recovered  from 
this  fever,  Horace  made  a  narrow  escape  from  being 
killed  by  the  fall  of  a  tree,  and,  what  to  him  was  a 
great  aggravation  of  the  disaster,  upon  his  own  beloved 
farm  (Odes,  II.  13).  He  links  the  two  events  together 
as  a  marked  coincidence  in  the  following  Ode  (II.  17). 
His  friend  had  obviously  been  a  prey  to  one  of  his  fits 
of  low  spirits,  and  vexing  the  kindly  soul  of  the  poet 
by  gloomy  anticipations  of  an  early  death.     Suffering, 

A.  C.  VOL  vi.  L 


1G2  HORACE. 

as  Maecenas  did,  from  those  terrible  attacks  of  sleep- 
lessness to  which  he  was  subject,  and  which  he  tried 
ineffectually  to  soothe  "by  the  plash  of  falling  water 
and  the  sound  of  distant  music,*  such  misgivings  were 
only  too  natural.  The  case  was  too  serious  this  time 
for  Horace  to  think  of  rallying  his  friend  into  a  brighter 
humour.  He  may  have  even  seen  good  cause  to 
share  his  fears ;  for  his  heart  is  obviously  moved  to  its 
very  depths,  and  his  sympathy  and  affection  well  out 
in  words,  the  jmthos  of  which  is  still  as  fresh  as  the 
day  they  first  came  with  comfort  to  the  saddened 
spirits  of  Maecenas  himself. 

"  Why  wilt  thou  kill  me  with  thy  boding  fears  ? 
Why,  oh  Maecenas,  why  ? 
Before  thee  lies  a  train  of  happy  years  : 

Yes,  nor  the  gods  nor  I 
Could  brook  that  thou  shouldst  first  be  laid  in  dust, 
Who  art  my  stay,  my  glory,  and  my  trust ! 

"  Ah,  if  untimely  Fate  should  snatch  thee  hence, 
Thee,  of  my  soul  a  part, 
Why  should  I  linger  on,  with  deadened  sense, 

And  ever- aching  heart, 
A  worthless  fragment  of  a  fallen  shrine  ? 
No,  no,  one  clay  shall  see  thy  death  and  mine ! 

"  Think  not  that  I  have  sworn  a  bootless  oath  ; 
Yes,  we  shall  go,  shall  go, 
Hand  link'd  in  hand,  whene'er  thou  leadest,  both 
The  last  sad  road  below  ! 

*  Had  Horace  this  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  "  JSfon  avium 
titharceque  cantus  somnum  rcducejit?"—  (Odes,  III.  1.) 

"  Nor  song  of  birds,  nor  music  of  the  lyre, 
Shall  his  lost  sleep  restore." 


AFFECTION  FOR  MjECENAS.  163 

Me  neither  the  Ghimaera's  fiery  breath, 

Nor  Gyges,  even  could  Gyges  rise  from  death, 

"  With  all  his  hundred  hands  from  thee  shall  sever  ; 

For  in  such  sort  it  hath 
Pleased  the  dread  Fates,  and  Justice  potent  ever, 

To  interweave  our  path.* 
Beneath  whatever  aspect  thou  wert  born, 
Libra,  or  Scorpion  tierce,  or  Capricorn, 

"  The  blustering  tyrant  of  the  western  deep, 

This  well  I  kuow,  my  friend, 
Our  stars  in  wondrous  wise  one  orbit  keep, 

Arid  in  one  radiance  blend. 
From  thee  were  Saturn's  baleful  rays  afar 
Averted  by  great  Jove's  refulgent  star, 

"  And  His  hand  stayed  Fate's  downward-swooping  wing, 

When  thrice  with  glad  acclaim 
The  teeming  theatre  was  heard  to  ring, 

And  thine  the  honoured  name  : 
So  had  the  falling  timber  laid  me  low, 
But  Pan  in  mercy  warded  off  the  blow, 

"  Pan  who  keeps  watch  o'er  easy  souls  like  mine. 
Remember,  then,  to  rear 
In  gratitude  to  Jove  a  votive  shrine, 

And  slaughter  many  a  steer, 
Whilst  I,  as  fits,  an  humbler  tribute  pay, 
And  a  meek  lamb  upon  his  altar  lay." 

What  the  poet,  in  this  burst  of  loving  sympathy, 

*  So   Cowley,   in  his  poem  on  the  death   of  Mr  William 
Harvey : — 

"  He  was  my  friend,  the  truest  friend  on  earth  ; 
A  strong  and  mighty  influence  joined  our  birth. 


164  HORACE. 

said  would  happen,  did  happen  almost  as  he  foretold 
it.  Maecenas  "first  deceased;"  and  Horace,  like  the 
wife  in  the  quaint,  tender,  old  epitaph, 

"  For  a  little  tried 
To  live  without  him,  liked  it  not,  and  died." 

But  this  was  not  till  many  years  after  this  Ode  was 
written,  which  must  have  been  about  the  year  B.C.  36, 
when  Horace  was  thirty-nine.  Maecenas  lived  for 
seventeen  years  afterwards,  and  often  and  often,  we 
may  believe,  turned  to  read  the  Ode,  and  be  refreshed 
by  it,  when  his  pulse  was  low,  and  his  heart  sick  and 
weary. 

Horace  included  it  in  the  first  series  of  the  Odes, 
containing  Books  I.  and  II.,  which  he  gave  to  the 
world  (B.C.  21).  The  first  of  these  Odes,  like  the  first 
of  the  Satires,  is  addressed  to  Maecenas.  The}''  had 
for  the  most  part  been  written,  and  were,  no  doubt, 
separately  in  circulation  several  years  before.  That 
they  should  have  met  with  success  was  certain  ;  for 
the  accomplished  men  who  led  society  in  Rome  must 
have  felt  their  beauty  even  more  keenly  than  the 
scholars  of  a  more  recent  time.  These  lyrics  brought 
the  music  of  Greece,  which  was  their  ideal,  into  their 
native  verse  ;  and  a  feeling  of  national  pride  must  have 
helped  to  augment  their  admiration.  Horace  had 
tuned  Ids  ear  upon  the  lyres  of  Sappho  and  Alcseus. 
He  had  even  in  his  youth  essayed  to  imitate  them  in 
their  own  tongue, — a  mistake  as  great  as  for  Goethe 
or  Heine  to  have  tried  to  put  their  lyrical  inspiration 
into  the  language  of  Herrick  or  of  Burns.  But  Horace 
was  preserved  from  perseverance  in  this  mistake  by  his 


THE    ODES.  1G5 

natural  good  sense,  or,  as  he  puts  it  himself,  with  a  fair 
poetic  licence  (Satires,  I.  10),  by  Eome's  great  founder 
Quirinus  warning  him  in  a  dream,  that 


a 


To  think  of  adding  to  the  mighty  throng 
Of  the  great  paragons  of  Grecian  song, 
Were  no  less  mad  an  act  than  his  who  should 
Into  a  forest  carry  logs  of  wood." 

These  exercises  may  not,  however,  have  been  with 
out  their  value  in  enabling  him  to  transfuse  the  mel 
odic  rhythm  cf  the  Greeks  into  his  native  verse.  And 
as  he  was  the  first  to  do  this  successfully,  if  we  except 
Catullus  in  some  slight  but  exquisite  poems,  so  he  was 
the  last.  "  Of  lyrists,"  sa^s  Quintilian,  "  Horace  is 
alone,  one  might  say,  worthy  to  be  read.  For  he  has 
bursts  of  inspiration,  and  is  full  of  playful  delicacy  and 
grace ;  and  in  the  variety  of  his  images,  as  well  as  in 
expression,  shows  a  most  happy  daring."  Time  has 
confirmed  the  verdict ;  and  it  has  recently  found  elo- 
quent expression  in  the  words  of  one  of  our  greatest 
scholars  : — 

"Horace's  style,"  says  Mr  H.  A.  J.  Munro,  in  the  intro- 
duction to  his  edition  of  the  poet,  "is  throughout  his  own, 
borrowed  from  none  who  preceded  him,  successfully  imi- 
tated by  none  who  came  after  him.  The  Virgilian  heroic 
was  appropriated  by  subsequent  generations  of  poets,  and 
adapted  to  their  purposes  with  signal  success.  The  hen- 
decasyllable  and  scazon  of  Catullus  became  part  and  parcel 
of  the  poetic  heritage  of  Rome,  and  Martial  employs 
them  only  less  happily  than  their  matchless  creator.  But 
the  moulds  in  which  Horace  cast  his  lyrical  and  his  sat- 
irical thoughts  were  broken  at  his  death.  The  stvle  neither 
of  Persius  nor  of  Juvenal  has  the  faintest  resemblance  to 
that  of  their  common  master.     Statius,  whose  hendeca- 


166  HORACE. 

syllables  are  passable  enough,  has  given  us  one  Alcaic  and 
one  Sapphic  ode,  which  recall  the  bald  and  constrained 
efforts  of  a  modern  schoolboy.  I  am  sure  he  could  not 
have  written  any  two  consecutive  stanzas  of  Horace  ;  and 
if  he  could  not,  who  could  ? " 

Before  he  published  the  first  two  books  of  his  Odes, 
Horace  had  fairly  felt  his  wings,  and  knew  they 
could  carry  him  gracefully  and  well.  He  no  longer 
hesitates,  as  he  had  done  while  a  writer  of  Satires  only 
(p.  55),  to  claim  the  title  of  poet ;  but  at  the  same 
time  he  throws  himself,  in  his  introductory  Ode,  with 
a  graceful  deference,  upon  the  judgment  of  Maecenas. 
Let  that  only  seal  his  lyrics  with  approval,  and  he 
will  feel  assured  of  his  title  to  rank  with  the  great 
sons  of  song  : — 

"  Do  thou  Dut  rank  me  'mong 
The  sacred  bards  of  lyric  song, 
I'll  soar  beyond  the  lists  of  time, 
And  strike  the  stars  with  head  sublime." 

In  the  last  Ode,  also  addressed  to  Maecenas,  of  the 
uecond  Book,  the  poet  gives  way  to  a  burst  of  joyous 
anticipation  of  future  fame,  figuring  himself  as  a 
swan  soaring  majestically  across  all  the  then  known 
regions  of  the  world.  When  he  puts  forth  the 
Third  Book  several  years  afterwards,  he  closes  it 
with  a  similar  paean  of  triumph,  which,  unlike 
most  prophecies  of  the  kind,  has  been  completely 
fulfilled.  In  both  he  alludes  to  the  lowliness  of 
his  birth,  speaking  of  himself  in  the  former  as  a 
child  of  poor  parents — "pauperum  sanguis  p<ircn* 
turn  ;  "  in  the  latter  as  having  risen  to  eminence  from 
<*   mean  estate — "  "&   hwrnih   pateim.        Iht^e   Gone  tier 


ANTICIPATION  OF  FAME,  167 

of  egotism,  the  sallies  of  some  brighter  hour,  are  not 
merely  venial ;  they  are  delightful  in  a  man  s'j  habitu- 
ally modest. 

"  I've  reared  a  monument,  my  own, 
More  durable  than  brass  ; 
Yea,  kingly  pyramids  of  stone 
In  height  it  doth  surpass. 


u 


Rain  shall  not  sap,  nor  driving  blast 

Disturb  its  settled  base, 
Nor  countless  ages  rolling  past 

Its  symmetry  deface. 

"  I  shall  not  wholly  die.     Some  part, 
Nor  that  a  little,  shall 
Escaj)e  the  dark  Destroyer's  dart, 
And  his  grim  festival. 

"  For  long  as  with  his  Vestals  mute 
Rome's  Pontifex  shall  climb 
The  Capitol,  my  feme  shall  shoot 
Fresh  buds  through  future  time. 

"  Where  brawls  loud  Aufidus,  and  came 
Parch'd  Daunus  erst,  a  horde 
Of  rustic  boors  to  sway,  my  name 
Shall  be  a  household  word  ; 

"  A?  one  who  rose  from  mean  estate. 
The  first  with  poet  fire 
JEoXic  song  to  modulate 
To  the  Italian  lyre. 

"  Then  grant,  Melpomene,  thy  son 
Thy  guerdon  proud  to  wear, 
And  Delphic  laurels,  duly  woo, 
Bind  thou  upon  my  haix  V 


CHAPTER    IX. 

HORACE'S    RELATIONS    WITH    AUGUSTUS. — HIS    LOV*    Cr 

INDEPENDENCE. 

No  intimate  friend  of  Maecenas  was  likely  to  D% 
long  a  stranger  to  Augustus  ;  and  it  is  most  impro- 
bable that  Augustus,  who  kept  up  his  love  of  good 
literature  amid  all  the  distractions  of  conquest  and 
empire,  should  not  have  early  sought  the  acquaintance 
of  a  man  of  such  conspicuous  ability  as  Horace.  But 
when  they  first  became  known  to  each  other  is  uncer- 
tain. In  more  than  one  of  the  Epodes  Horace  speaks 
of  him,  but  not  in  terms  to  imply  personal  acquaint- 
ance. Some  years  further  on  it  is  different.  When 
Trebatius  (Satires,  II.  1)  is  urging  the  poet,  if  write 
he  must,  to  renounce  satire,  and  to  sing  of  Caesar's 
triumphs,  from  which  he  would  reap  gain  as  well  aa 
glory,  Horace  replies, — 

"  Most  worthy  sir,  that's  just  the  thing 
I'd  like  especially  to  sing  ; 
But  at  the  task  my  spirits  faint, 
For  'tis  not  every  one  can  paint 
Battalions,  with  their  bristling  wall 
Of  pikes,  and  make  you  see  the  Gaul, 


AUGUSTUS.  169 

"With  shivered  spear,  in  death-throe  bleed, 
Or  Parthian  stricken  from  his  steed." 

Then  why  not  sing,  rejoins  Trebatius,  his  justice  and 
his  fortitude, 

"  Like  sage  Lucilius,  in  his  lays 
To  Scipio  Africanus'  praise  ? " 

The  reply  is  that  of  a  man  "who  had  obviously 
been  admitted  to  personal  contact  with  the  Caesar, 
and,  with  instinctive  good  taste,  recoiled  from  doing 
what  he  knew  would  be  unacceptable  to  him,  unless 
called  for  by  some  very  special  occasion  : — 

"  When  time  and*  circumstance  suggest, 

DO  7 

I  shall  not  fail  to  do  my  best ; 

But  never  words  of  mine  shall  touch 

Great  Caesar's  ear,  but  only  such 

As  are  to  the  occasion  due, 

And  spring  from  my  conviction,  too  ; 

For  stroke  him  with  an  awkward  hand, 

And  he  kicks  out — you  understand  ?" 

an  allusion,  no  doubt,  to  the  impatience  entertained 
by  Augustus,  to  which  Suetonius  alludes,  of  the  indis- 
creet panegyrics  of  poetasters  by  which  he  was  perse- 
cuted. The  gossips  of  Rome  clearly  believed  (Satires, 
II.  6)  that  the  poet  was  intimate  with  Caesar ;  for  he 
is  "so  close  to  the  gods" — that  is,  on  such  a  footing 
with  Augustus  and  his  chief  advisers  —  that  they 
assume,  as  a  matter  of  course,  he  must  have  early 
tidings  of  all  the  most  recent  political  news  at  first 
hand.  However  this  may  be,  by  the  time  the  Odes 
were  published   Horace  had  overcome   any  previous 


170  HORACE. 

scruples,  and  sang  in  no  measured  terms  the  praises  of 
him,  the  back-stroke  of  whose  rebuke  he  had  professed 
himself  so  fearful  of  provoking. 

All  Horace's  prepossessions  must  have  been  against 
one  of  the  leaders  before  whose  opposition  Brutus,  the 
ideal  hero  of  bis  youthful  enthusiasm,  had  succumbed. 
Neither  were  the  sanguinary  proscriptions  and  ruthless 
spoliations  by  which  the  triumvirate  asserted  its  power, 
and  from  a  large  share  of  the  guilt  of  which  Augustus 
could  not  shake  himself  free,  calculated  to  conciliate 
his  regards.  He  had  much  to  forget  and  to  forgive 
before  he  could  look  without  aversion  upon  the 
blood-stained  avenger  of  the  great  Caesar.  But  in 
times  like  those  in  which  Horace's*  lot  was  cast,  we 
do  not  judge  of  men  or  things  as  we  do  when 
social  order  is  unbroken,  when  political  crime  is  never 
condoned,  and  the  usual  standards  of  moral  judg- 
ment are  rigidly  enforced.  Horace  probably  soon 
came  to  see,  what  is  now  very  apparent,  that  when 
Brutus  and  his  friends  struck  down  Caesar,  they  dealt 
a  deathblow  to  what,  but  for  this  event,  might  have 
proved  to  be  a  well-ordered  government.  Liberty  was 
dead  long  before  Caesar  aimed  at  supremacy.  It  was 
dead  when  individuals  like  Sylla  and  Marius  had 
become  stronger  than  the  laws ;  and  the  death  of 
Caesar  was,  therefore,  but  the  prelude  to  fresh  disasters, 
and  to  the  ultimate  investiture  with  absolute  power  ot 
whoever,  among  the  competitors  for  it,  should  come 
triumphantly  out  of  what  was  sure  to  be  a  protracted 
and  a  sanguinary  struggle.  In  what  state  did  Horace 
tind  Italy  after  his  return  from  Philippi  1     Drenched 


AUGUSTUS.  171 

in  the  blood  of  its  citizens,  desolated  by  pillage,  har- 
assed by  daily  fears  of  internecine  conflict  at  home 
and  of  invasion  from  abroad,  its  sovereignty  a  stake 
played  for  by  political  gamblers.     In  such  a  state  of 
things  it  was  no  longer  the  question,   how  the   eld 
Ronian  constitution  was  to  be  restored,  but  how  the 
country  itself  was  to  be   saved  from  ruin.     Prestige 
was  with  the  nephew  of  the  Cixjsar  whose  memory  the 
Roman  populace  had  almost  from  his  death  worshipped 
as  divine;  and  whose  conspicuous  ability  and  address,  as 
well  as  those  of  his  friends,  naturally  attracted  to  his 
side  the  ablest  survivors  of  the  party  of  Brutus.     The 
very  course  of  events  pointed  to  him  as  the  future  chief 
of  the  state.     Lepidus,  by  the  sheer  weakness  and  inde- 
cision of  his  character,  SDon  went  to  the  wall ;  and  the 
power  of   Antony   was   weakened    by  his    continued 
absence  from  Borne,  and  ultimately  destroyed  by  the 
malign  influence  exerted  upon  his   character  by  the 
fascinations  of  the  Egyptian  Queen  Cleopatra.     The 
disastrous    failure    of    his    Parthian    expedition    (b.c. 
36),    and    the     tidings     that    reached    Rome    from 
time    to    time     of    the    mad     extravagance     of    his 
private    life,   of    his    abandonment    of    the    character 
of    a    Roman    citizen,    and    his    assumption    of    the 
barbaric    pomp    and    habits    of    an    oriental    despot, 
made  men  look  to  his  great  rival  as  the  future  head  of 
the  state,  especially  as  they  saw  that  rival  devoting  all 
his  powers   to  the  task   of  reconciling  divisions  and 
restoring   peace   to   a   country    exhausted   by    a    long 
series  of  civil  broils,  of  giving  security  to  life  and  pro- 
perty at  hom°,  and  making  Rome  once  more  a  name 


172  HORACE. 

of  awe  throughout  the  world.  Was  it,  then,  otherwise 
than  natural  that  Horace,  in  common  with  many  of  his 
friends,  should  have  been  not  only  content  to  forget 
the  past,  with  its  bloody  and  painful  records,  but 
should  even  have  attached  himself  cordially  to  the 
parly  of  Augustus?  Whatever  the  private  aims  of 
the  Caesar  may  have  been,  his  public  life  showed  that 
he  had  the  welfare  of  his  country  strongly  at  heart, 
and  the  current  of  events  had  made  it  clear  that  he  at 
least  was  alone  able  to  end  the  strife  of  faction  by 
assuming  the  virtual  supremacy  of  the  state. 

Pollio,  Messalla,  Varus,  and  others  of  the  Brutus 
party,  have  not  been  denounced  as  renegades  because 
they  arrived  at  a  similar  conclusion,  and  lent  the 
whole  influence  of  their  abilities  and  their  names  to 
the  cause  of  Augustus.  Horace  has  not  been  so  for- 
tunate ;  and  because  he  has  expressed, — what  was  no 
doubt  the  prevailing  feeling  of  his  countrymen, — grati- 
tude to  Augustus  for  quelling  civil  strife,  for  bringing 
glory  to  the  empire,  and  giving  peace,  security,  and 
happiness  to  his  country  by  the  power  of  his  arms  and 
the  wisdom  of  his  administration,  the  poet  has  been 
called  a  traitor  to  the  nobler  principles  of  his  youth — 
an  obsequious  flatterer  of  a  man  whom  he  ought  to 
have  denounced  to  posterity  as  a  tyrant.  Adroit 
esdave  is  the  epithet  applied  to  him  in  this  respect  by 
Voltaire,  who  idolises  him  as  a  moralist  and  poet. 
But  it  carries  little  weight  in  the  mouth  of  the  cynic 
who  could  fawn  with  more  than  courtierly  complais- 
ance on  a  Frederick  or  a  Catherine,  and  weave  graceful 
llatteries  for  the  Pompadour,  and  who  "  dearly  loved  a 


AUGUSTUS.  173 

lord  "  in  his  practice,  however  he  may  have  sneered  at 
aristocracy  in  his  writings.  But  if  we  put  ourselves 
as  far  as  we  can  into  the  poet's  place,  we  shall  come  to  a 
much  more  lenient  conclusion.  He  could  no  doubt 
appreciate  thoroughly  the  advantages  of  a  free  repub- 
lic or  of  a  purely  constitutional  government,  and  would, 
of  course,  have  preferred  either  of  these  for  his  country. 
But  while  theory  pointed  in  that  direction,  facts  were 
all  pulling  the  opposite  way.  The  materials  for  the 
establishment  of  such  a  state  of  things  did  not  exist  in 
a  strong  middle  class  or  an  equal  balance  of  parties. 
The  choice  lay  between  the  anarchy  of  a  continued 
strife  of  selfish  factions,  and  the  concentration  of  power 
in  the  hands  of  some  individual  who  should  be  cap- 
able  of  enforcing  law  at  home  and  commanding  re- 
spect abroad.  So  at  least  Horace  obviously  thought ; 
and  surely  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  man, 
whose  integrity  and  judgment  in  all  other  matters 
are  indisputable,  was  more  likely  than  the  acutest 
critic  or  historian  of  modern  times  can  possibly  be  to 
form  a  just  estimate  of  what  was  the  possible  best  for 
his  country,  under  the  actual  circumstances  of  the 
time. 

Had  Horace  at  once  become  the  panegyrist  of  the 
Caesar,  the  sincerity  of  his  convictions  might  have 
been  open  to  question.  But  thirteen  years  at  least 
had  elapsed  between  the  battle  of  Philippi  and  the 
composition  of  the  Second  Ode  of  the  First  Book, 
which  is  the  first  direct  acknowledgment  by  Horace 
of  Augustus  as  the  chief  of  the  state.  This  Ode  is 
directly  inspired  by  gratitude  for  the  cessation  of  civil 


174  HORACE. 

strife,  and  the  skilful  administration  which  had  brought 
things  to  the  point  when  the  whole  fighting  force  of 
the  kingdom,  which  had  so  long  been  wasted  in  that 
strife,  could  be  directed  to  spreading  the  glory  of  the 
Roman  name,  and  securing  its  supremacy  throughout 
its  conquered  provinces.  The  allusions  to  Augustus 
in  this  and  others  of  the  earlier  Odes  are  somewhaf 
cold  and  formal  in  their  tone.  There  is  a  visible  in- 
crease in  glow  and  energy  in  those  of  a  later  date,  when, 
as  years  went  on,  the  Caesar  established  fresh  claims 
on  the  gratitude  of  Rome  by  his  firm,  sagacious,  and 
moderate  policy,  by  the  general  prosperity  which  grew 
up  under  his  administration,  by  the  success  of  his 
arms,  by  the  great  public  works  which  enhanced  the 
splendour  and  convenience  of  the  capital,  by  the  res- 
toration of  the  laws,  and  by  his  zealous  endeavour  to 
stem  the  tide  of  immorality  which  had  set  in  during 
the  protracted  disquietudes  of  the  civil  wars.  It  is  true 
that  during  this  time  Augustus  was  also  establishing 
the  system  of  Imperialism,  Avhich  contained  in  itself 
the  germs  of  tyranny,  with  all  its  brutal  excesses  on 
the  one  hand,  and  its  debasing  influence  upon  the  sub- 
ject nation  on  the  other.  But  we  who  have  seen  into 
what  it  developed  must  remember  that  these  baneful 
fruits  of  the  system  were  of  lengthened  growth;  and 
Horace,  who  saw  no  farther  into  the  future  than  the 
practical  politicians  of  his  time,  may  be  forgiven  if  he 
dwelt  only  upon  the  immediate  blessings  which  the 
government  of  Augustus  effected,  and  the  peace  and 
security  which  came  with  a  tenfold  welcome  after  the 
long  agonies  of  the  civil  wars. 


HIS  PRAISE   OF  AUGUSTUS.  175 

The  glow  and  sincerity  of  feeling  of  which  we  have 
spoken  are  conspicuous  in  the  following  Ode  (IV.  2), 
addressed  to  lulus  Antonius,  the  son  of  the  triumvir, 
of  whose  powers  as  a  poet  nothing  is  known  beyond 
the  implied  recognition  of  them  contained  in  this  Ode. 
The  Sicambri,  with  two  other  German  tribes,  had 
crossed  the  Rhine,  laid  waste  part  of  the  Roman  terri- 
tory in  Gaul,  and  inflicted  so  serious  a  blow  on  Lollius, 
the  Roman  legate,  that  Augustus  himself  rej>aired  to 
Gaul  to  retrieve  the  defeat  and  resettle  the  province. 
This  he  accomplished  triumphantly  (b.c.  17);  and  we 
may  assume  that  the  Ode  was  written  while  the  tidings 
of  his  success  were  still  fresh,  and  the  Romans,  who 
had  been  greatly  agitated  by  the  defeat  of  Lollius, 
were  looking  eagerly  forward  to  his  return.  Apart 
from  its  other  merits,  the  Ode  is  interesting  from  the 
estimate  Horace  makes  in  it  of  his  own  powers,  and 
his  avowal  of  the  labour  which  his  verses  cost  him. 

u  lulus,  he  who'd  rival  Pindar's  fame, 
On  waxen  wings  doth  sweep 
The  Empyrean  steep, 
To  fall  like  Icarus,  and  with  his  name 
Endue  the  glassy  deep. 

"  Like  to  a  mountain  stream,  that  roars 
From  bank  to  bank  along, 
When  Autumn  rains  are  strong, 
So  deep-mouthed  Pindar  lifts  his  voice,  and  pours 
His  fierce  tumultuous  song. 

fa  Worthy  Apollo's  laurel  wreath, 
Whether  he  strike  the  lyre 
To  love  and  young  desire, 


17G  HORACE. 

While  bold  and  lawless  numbers  grow  beneatb. 
His  mastering  touch  of  fire  ; 

"  Or  sings  of  gods,  and  monarchs  sprung 
Of  gods,  that  overthrew 
The  Centaurs,  hideous  crew, 
And,  fearless  of  the  monster's  fiery  tongue, 
The  dread  Chimsera  slew  , 

'4  Or  those  the  Elean  palm  doth  lift 
To  heaven,  for  winged  steed, 
Or  sturdv  arm  decreed, 
Giving,  than  hundred  statues  nobler  crift, 
The  poet's  deathless  meed  ; 

w  Or  mourns  the  youth  snatched  from  his  bride, 
Extols  his  manhood  clear, 
And  to  the  starry  sphere 
Exalts  his  golden  virtues,  scattering  wide 
The  gloom  of  Orcus  drear. 


o* 


"  When  the  Dircean  swan  doth  climb 
Into  the  azure  sky, 
There  poised  in  ether  high, 
He  courts  each  gale,  and  floats  on  wing  sublime, 
Soaring  with  steadfast  eye. 

"  I,  like  the  tiny  bee,  that  sips 

The  fragrant  thyme,  and  strays 
Humming  through  leafy  ways, 
By  Tibur's  sedgy  banks,  with  trembling  lips 
Fashion  my  toilsome  lays. 

"  But  thou,  when  up  the  sacred  steep 
Crcsar,  with  garlands  crowned, 
Leads  the  Sicambrians  bound, 
With  bolder  hand  the  echoing  strings  shalt  sweep. 
And  bolder  measures  sound. 


ODE   TO  IULUS  AN  TOy  I  US.  177 

**  Caesar,  than  whom  a  nobler  son 

The  Fates  and  Heaven's  kind  powers 
Ne'er  gave  this  earth  of  ours, 
Nor  e'er  will  give  though  backward  time  should  run 
To  its  first  golden  hours. 


"  Thou  too  shalt  sing  the  joyful  days, 
The  city's  festive  throng, 
When  Caesar,  absent  long, 
A.t  length  returns, — the  Forum's  silent  ways, 
Serene  from  strife  and  wrong. 


*»• 


"  Then,  though  in  statelier  power  it  lack, 
My  voice  shall  swell  the  lay, 
And  sing,  '  Oh,  glorious  day, 
Oh,  day  thrice  blest,  that  gives  great  Caesar  back 
To  Rome,  from  hostile  fray  ! ' 

"  '  Io  Triumphe  ! '  thrice  the  cry ; 
'  Io  Triumphe  ! '  loud 
Shall  shout  the  echoing  crowd 
The  city  through,  and  to  the  gods  on  high 
"Raise  incense  like  a  cloud. 

*  Ten  bulls  shall  pay  thy  sacrifice, 
With  whom  ten  kine  shall  bleed  : 
I  to  the  fane  will  lead 
A  yearling  of  the  herd,  of  modest  size, 
From  the  luxuriant  mead, 

*'  Horned  like  the  moon,  when  her  pale  light 
Which  three  brief  days  have  fed, 
She  trimmeth,  and  dispread 
On  his  broad  brows  a  spot  of  snowy  white, 
All  else  a  tawny  red." 

Augustus  did  not  return  from  Gaul,  as  was  expected 
v  hen  this   Ode  was  written,  but  remained  there  for 
a.  c.  vol.  vi.  m 


178  iiorace. 

about  two  }7ears.  That  this  protracted  absence  caused 
no  little  disquietude  in  Homo  is  apparent  from  the 
following  Ode  (IV.  5)  :— 

"  From  gods  benign  descended,  thou 
Best  guardian  of  the  fates  of  Rome, 
Too  long  already  from  thy  home 
Hast  thou,  dear  chief,  been  absent  now  ; 

"  Oh,  then  return,  the  pledge  redeem, 

Thou  gav'st  the  Senate,  and  once  mor^j 
Its  light  to  all  the  land  restore  ; 
For  when  thy  face,  like  spring-tide's  gleam, 

u  Its  brightness  on  the  people  sheds, 

Then  glides  the  day  more  sweetly  by, 
A  brighter  blue  pervades  the  sky, 
The  sun  a  richer  radiance  spreads  ! 

"  As  on  her  boy  the  mother  calls, 
,       Her  boy,  whom  envious  tempests  keep 
Beyond  the  vexed  Carpathian  deep,       * 
From  his  dear  home,  till  winter  falls, 

u  And  still  with  vow  and  prayer  she  cries, 
Still  gazes  on  the  winding  shore, 
So  yearns  the  country  evermore 
For  Csesar,  with  fond,  wistful  eyes. 

"For  safe,  the  herds  range  field  and  fen, 
Full-headed  stand  the  shocks  of  grain, 
Our  sailors  sweep  the  peaceful  main, 
And  man  can  trust  his  fellow-men. 

"  No  more  adulterers  stain  our  beds, 
Laws,  morals,  both  that  taint  ellace, 
The  husband  in  the  child  we  trace, 
And  close  on  crime  sure  vengeance  treada. 


-ODE    TO   AUGUSTUS.  \\  9 

"  The  Parthian,  under  Ccesar's  reign, 
Or  icy  Scythian,  who  can  dread, 
Or  all  the  tribes  barbarian  bred 
By  Germany,  ur  ruthless  Spain  I 

"  Now  each  man,  basking  on  his  slopes, 
Weds  to  his  widowed  trees  the  vine, 
Then,  as  he  gaily  quaffs  his  wine, 
Salutes  thee  god  of  all  his  hopes  ; 

"  And  prayers  to  thee  devoutly  sends, 
"With  deep  libations  ;  and,  as  Greece 
Ranks  Castor  and  great  Hercules, 
Thy  godship  with  his  Lares  blends. 

"Oh,  may'st  thou  on  Hesperia  shine, 
Her  chief,  her  joy,  for  many  a  day  ! 
Thus,  dry-lipped,  thus  at  morn  we  pray, 
Thus  pray  at  eve,  when  flushed  with  wine." 


« 


It  was  perhaps  the  poliey  of  Augustus,"  says  Macleane, 
"to  make  his  absence  felt  ;  and  we  may  believe  that  the 
language  of  Horace,  which  bears  much  more  the  impress 
of  real  feeling  than  of  flattery,  represented  the  sentiments 
of  great  numbers  at  Rome,  who  felt  the  want  of  that  pre- 
siding genius  which  had  brought  the  city  through  its  long 
troubles,  and  given  it  comparative  peace.  There  could  not 
be  a  more  comprehensive  picture  of  security  and  rest 
obtained  through  the  influence  of  one  mind  than  is  repre- 
sented in  this  Ode,  if  we  except  that  with  which  no  merely 
mortal  language  can  compare  (Isaiah,  xi.  and  lxv.  ;  Micah, 
iv.)" 

We  must  not  assume,  from  the  reference  in  this 
and  other  Odes  to  the  divine  origin  of  Augustus,  that 
this  was  seriously  believed  in  by  Horace,  any  more 
than  it  was  by  Augustus  himself.     Popular  credulity 


180  HORACE. 

ascribed  divine  honours  to  great  men  ;  and  this  was 
the  natural  growth  of  a  religious  system  in  which  a 
variety  of  gods  and  demigods  played  so  large  a  part. 
Julius  Caesar  claimed — no  doubt,  for  the  purpose  of 
impressing  the  Roman  populace — a  direct  descent 
from  Alma  Verms  Genitrix,  as  Antony  did  from  Her- 
cules. Altars  and  temples  were  dedicated  to  great 
statesmen  and  generals  ;  and  the  Romans,  among  the 
other  things  which  they  borrowed  from  the  East,  bor- 
rowed also  the  practice  of  conferring  the  honours  of 
apotheosis  upon  their  rulers, — the  visible  agents,  in 
their  estimation,  of  the  great  invisible  power  that 
governed  the  world.  To  speak  of  their  divine  descent 
and  attributes  became  part  of  the  common  forms  of 
the  poetical  vocabulary,  not  inappropriate  to  the 
exalted  pitch  of  lyrical  enthusiasm.  Horace  only  falls 
into  the  prevailing  strain,  and  is  not  compromising 
himself  by  servile  flattery,  as  some  have  thought, 
when  he  speaks  in  this  Ode  of  Augustus  as  "from 
gods  benign  descended,"  and  in  others  as  "  the  heaven- 
sent son  of  Maia"  (I.  2),  or  as  reclining  among  the 
gods  and  quaffing  nectar  "  with  lip  of  deathless  bloom" 
(III.  3).  In  lyrical  poetry  all  this  was  quite  in  place. 
But  when  the  poet  contracts  his  wings,  and  drops 
from  its  empyrean  to  the  level  of  the  earth,  he  speaks 
to  Augustus  and  of  him  simply  as  he  thought  (Epi.stles, 
II.  1) — as  a  man  on  whose  shoulders  the  weight  of 
empire  rested,  who  protected  the  commonwealth  by 
the  vigour  of  his  armies,  and  strove  to  grace  it  by 
"  sweeter  manners,  purer  laws."  He  adds,  it  is 
true, — 


HORACE  NO  SYCOPHANT.  181 

"  You  while  m  life  are  honoured  as  divine, 
And  vows  and  oaths  are  taken  at  your  shrine  ; 
So  Koine  pays  honour  to  her  man  of  men, 
Ne'er  seen  on  earth  before,  ne'er  to  be  seen  again  " — (C* 

but  this  is  no  more  than  a  statement  of  a  fact.  Altars 
were  erected  to  Augustus,  much  against  his  will,  and 
at  these  men  made  their  pnayers  or  plighted  their 
oaths  every  day.  There  is  not  a  word  to  imply  either 
that  Augustus  took  these  divine  honours,  or  that 
Horace  joined  in  ascribing  them,  seriously. 

It  is  of  some  importance  to  the  argument  in  favour 
of  Horace's  sincerity  and  independence,  that  he  had  no 
selfish  end  to  serve  by  standing  well  with  Augustus. 
We  have  seen  that  he  was  more  than  content  with 
the  moderate  fortune  secured  to  him  by  Maecenas. 
Wealth  had  no  charms  for  him.  His  ambition  was  to 
make  his  mark  as  a  poet.  His  happiness  lay  in  being 
his  own  master.  There  is  no  trace  of  his  having  at 
any  period  been  swayed  by  other  views.  What  then 
had  he  to  gain  by  courting  the  favour  of  the  head  of 
the  state  1  But  the  argument  goes  further.  When 
Augustus  found  the  pressure  of  his  private  correspond- 
ence too  great,  as  his  public  duties  increased,  and  his 
health,  never  robust,  began  to  fail,  he  offered  Horace 
the  post  of  his  private  secretary.  The  poet  declined 
on  the  ground  of  health.  He  contrived  to  do  so  in 
such  a  way  as  to  give  no  umbrage  by  the  refusal ;  nay, 
the  letters  which  are  quoted  in  the  life  of  Horace 
ascribed  to  Suetonius  show  that  Augustus  begged 
the  poet  to  treat  him  on  the  same  footing  as  if  he  had 
accepted  the  office,  and  actually  become  a  member  of 


182  HORACE. 

his  household.  "Our  friend  Septimius,"  lie  says  in 
another  letter,  "  will  tell  you  how  much  you  are  in  my 
thoughts ;  for  something  led  to  my  speaking  of  you 
before  him.  Xeither,  if  you  were  too  proud  to  accept 
my  friendship,  do  I  mean  to  deal  with  you  in  the 
same  spirit."  There  could  have  been  little  of  the 
courtier  in  the  man  who  was  thus  addressed.  Horace 
apparently  felt  that  Augustus  and  himself  were  likely 
to  be  better  friends  at  a  distance.  He  had  seen 
enough  of  court  life  to  know  how  perilous  it  is  to 
that  independence  which  was  his  dearest  possession. 
"  Dulcis  inexpertis  cult'ura  potentis  amid, — Expertus 
metuit"  is  his  ultimate  conviction  on  this  head 
(Epistles,  I.  18)— 

"  Till  time  has  made  us  wise,  'tis  sweet  to  wait 
Upon  the  smiles  and  favour  of  the  great ; 
But  he  that  once  has  ventured  that  career 
Shrinks  from  its  perils  M'ith  instinctive  fear." 

In  another  place  (Epistles,  I.  10)  he  says,  "Fug* 
magna;  licet  sub  paupere  tecto  lieges  et  regum  vita 
praicurrere  amicos  " — 

"  Keep  clear  of  courts  ;  a  homely  life  transcends 
The  vaunted  bliss  of  monarchs  and  their  friends."  (C.) 

But  apart  from  such  considerations,  life  would  have 
lost  its  charm  for  Horace,  had  he  put  himself  within  the 
trammels  of  official  service.  At  no  time  would  these 
have  been  tolerable  to  him  ;  but  as  he  advanced  into 
middle  age,  the  freedom  of  entire  independence,  the 
refreshing  solitudes  of  the  country,  leisure  for  study 


HIS  INDEPENDENCE.  183 

and  reflection,  became  more  and  more  precious  to  him. 
The  excitements  and  gaieties  and  social  enjoyments  of 
Rome  were  all  verv  well,  but  a  little  of  them  went  a 
great  way.  They  taxed  his  delicate  health,  and  they 
interfered  with  the  graver  studies,  to  which  he  became 
daily  more  inclined  as  the  years  went  by.  Not  all 
his  regard  for  Maecenas  himself,  deep  as  it  was,  could 
induce  him  to  stay  in  town  to  enliven  the  leisure 
hours  of  the  statesman  by  his  companionship  at  the 
expense  of  those  calm  seasons  of  communion  with 
nature  and  the  hooks  of  the  great  men  of  old,  in 
which  he  could  indulge  his  -  irresistible  craving  for 
some  solution  of  the  great  problems  of  life  and  philo- 
sophy. Men  like  Maecenas,  whose  power  and  wealth 
are  practically  unbounded,  are  apt  to  become  impor- 
tunate even  in  their  friendships,  and  to  think  that 
everything  should  give  way  to  the  gratification  of  their 
wishes.  Something  of  this  spirit  had  obviously  been 
shown  towards  Horace.  Ma3cenas  may  have  expressed 
himself  in  a  tone  of  complaint,  either  to  the  poet  him- 
self, or  in  some  way  that  had  reached  his  ears,  about 
his  prolonged  absence  in  the  country,  which  implied 
that  he  considered  his  bounties  had  given  him  a  claim 
upon  the  time  of  Horace  which  was  not  sufficiently 
considered.  This  could  only  have  been  a  burst  of 
momentary  impatience,  for  the  nature  of  Maecenas  was 
too  generous  to  admit  of  any  other  supposition.  But 
Horace  felt  it ;  and  with  the  utmost  delicacy  of  tact, 
but  with  a  decision  that  left  no  room  for  mistake,  he 
lost  no  time  in  letting  Maecenas  know,  that  rather 
than   brook    control    upon   his    movements,    howevei 


184  HORACE. 

slight,  he  will  cheerfully  forego  the  gifts  of  his  friend, 
clear  as  they  are,  and  grateful  for  them  as  he  must 
always  be.  To  this  we  owe  the  following  Epistle 
(I.  7)  That  Maecenas  loved  his  friend  all  the  better 
for  it — he  could  scarcely  respect  him  more  than  he 
seems  to  have  done  from  the  first — we  may  be  very 
sure. 

Only  five  days,  I  said,  I  should  be  gone  ; 

Yet  August's  past,  and  still  I  linger  on. 

'Tis  true  I've  broke  my  promise.     But  if  you 

Would  have  me  well,  as  I  am  sure  you  do, 

Grant  me  the  same  indulgence,  which,  were  I 

Laid  up  with  illness,  you  would  not  deny, 

Although  I  claim  it  only  for  the  fear 

Of  being  ill,  this  deadly  time  of  year, 

When  autumn's  clammy  heat  and  early  fruits 

Deck  undertakers  out,  and  inky  mutes  ; 

When  young  mammas,  and  fathers  to  a  man, 

With  terrors  for  their  sons  and  heirs  are  wan  ; 

When  stifling  anteroom,  or  court,  distils 

Fevers  wholesale,  and  breaks  the  seals  of  wills. 

Should  winter  swathe  the  Alban  fields  in  snow, 

Down  to  the  sea  your  poet  means  to  go, 

To  nurse  his  ailments,  and,  in  cosy  nooks 

Close  huddled  up,  to  loiter  o'er  his  books. 

But  once  let  zephyrs  blow,  sweet  friend,  and  then, 

If  then  you'll  have  him,  he  will  quit  his  den, 

With  the  first  swallow  hailing  you  again. 

When  you  bestowed  on  me  what  made  me  rich, 
Not  in  the  spirit  was  it  done,  in  which 
Your  bluff  Calabrian  on  a  guest  will  thrust 
His  pears :  "  Come,  eat,  man,  eat — you  can,  you  must !" 
"  Indeed,  indeed,  my  friend,  I've  had  enough." 
"Then  take  somehome!"  "You're  too  obliging."  "Stuff  J 


EPISTLE   TO  MAECENAS.  185 

If  you  have  pockets  full  of  them,  I  guess, 

Your  little  lads  will  like  you  none  the  less." 

"  I  really  can't — thanks  all  the  same !"     "You  won't  1 

Why  then  the  pigs  shall  have  them,  if  you  don't." 

'Tis  fools  and  prodigals,  whose  gifts  consist 
Of  what  they  spurn,  or  what  is  never  missed  : 
Such  tilth  will  never  yield,  and  never  could, 
A  harvest  save  of  coarse  ingratitude. 
A  wise  good  man  is  evermore  alert, 
When  he  encounters  it,  to  own  desert  ; 
Nor  is  he  one,  on  whom  you'd  try  to  pass 
For  sterling  currency  mere  lackered  "brass. 
For  me,  'twill  be  my  aim  myself  to  raise 
Even  to  the  flattering  level  of  your  praise  ; 
But  if  you'd  have  me  always  by  your  side, 
Then  give  me  back  the  chest  deep-breathed  and  wide, 
The  low  brow  clustered  with  its  locks  of  black, 
The  flow  of  talk,  the  ready  laugh,  give  back, 
The  woes  blabbed  o'er  our  wine,  when  Cinara  chose 
To  teaze  me,  cruel  flirt— ah,  happy  woes  ! 

Through  a  small  hole  a  field-mouse,  lank  and  thii 
Had  squeezed  his  way  into  a  barley  bin, 
And,  having  fed  to  fatness  on  the  grain, 
Tried  to  get  out,  but  tried  and  squeezed  in  vain. 
a  Friend,"  cried  a  weasel,  loitering  thereabout, 
u  Lean  you  went  in,  and  lean  you  must  get  out." 
Now,  at  my  head  if  folks  this  story  throw, 
Whate'er  I  have  I'm  ready  to  forego  ; 
I  am  not  one,  with  forced  meats  in  my  throat, 
Fine  saws  on  poor  men's  dreamless  sleep  to  quote. 
Unless  in  soul  as  very  air  I'm  free, 
Not  all  the  wealth  of  Araby  for  me. 

You've  ofttimes  praised  the  reverent,  yet  true 
Devotion,  which  my  heart  has  shown  for  you. 
King,  father,  I  have  called  you,  nor  been  slack 
In  words  of  gratitude  behind  your  back  ; 


186  HORACE. 

Bitf  even  your  bounties,  if  you  care  to  try, 
Y"ou'll  find  I  can  renounce  without  a  sigh. 
Not  badly  young  Telemachus  replied, 
Ulysses'  son,  that  man  so  surely  tried  : 
"  No  mettled  steeds  in  Ithaca  we  want; 
The  ground  is  broken  there,  the  herbage  scant. 
Let  me,  Atrides,  then,  thy  gifts  decline, 
In  thy  hands  they  are  better  far  than  mine  ! " 
Yes,  little  things  fit  little  folks.     In  Rome 
The  Great  I  never  feel  myself  at  home. 
Let  me  have  Tibur,  and  its  dreamful  ease, 
Or  soft  Tarentum's  nerve-relaxing  breeze. 
Philip,  the  famous  counsel,  on  a  day — 
A.  burly  man,  and  wilful  in  his  way — 
From  court  returning,  somewhere  about  two, 
And  grumbling,  fur  his  years  were  far  from  few, 
That  the  Carina?*  were  so  distant,  though 
But  from  the  Forum  half  a  mile  or  so, 
Descried  a  fellow  in  a  barber's  booth, 
All  by  himself,  his  chin  fresh  shaved  and  smooth, 
Trimming  his  nails,  and  with  the  easy  air 
Of  one  un  cumbered  by  a  wish  or  care. 
"  Demetrius  ;'; — 'twas  his  page,  a  boy  of  tact, 
In  comprehension  swift,  and  swift  in  act, 
"  Go,  ascertain  his  rank,  name,  fortune;  track 
His  father,  patron  !  "     In  a  trice  he's  back. 
"  An  auction-crier,  Volteius  Mena,  sir, 
Means  poor  enough,  no  spot  on  character, 
Good  or  to  work  or  idle,  get  or  spend, 
Has  his  own  house,  delights  to  sec  a  friend, 
Fund  of  the  play,  and  sure,  when  work  is  done, 
Of  those  who  crowd  the  Campus  to  make  one." 

*  The  street  where  lie  lived,  or,  as  we  should  say,  "Ship 
Street."  The  name  was  due  probably  to  the  circumstance  of 
models  of  ships  being  set  up  in  it. 


PHILIP  AND   MEN  A.  187 

"I'd  like  to  hear  all  from  himself.     Awav, 


} 


Bid  liim  come  dine  with  me — at  once — to-day  V' 

Mena  some  trick  in  the  request  divines, 

Turns  it  all  ways,  then  civilly  declines. 

"  What  !     Says  me  nay  ?"     "  'Tis  even  so,  sir.     Why  1 

Can't  say.     Dislikes  you,  or,  more  likely,  shy." 

Next  morning  Philip  searches  Mena  out, 

And  finds  him  vending  to  a  rabble  rout 

Old  crazy  lumber,  frippery  of  the  worst, 

And  with  all  courtesy  salutes  him  first. 

Mena  pleads  occupation,  ties  of  trade, 

His  service  else  he  would  by  dawn  have  paid, 

At  Philip's  house, — was  grieved  to  think,  that  how 

He  should  have  failed  to  notice  him  till  now. 

"  On  one  condition  I  accept  your  plea. 

You  come  this  afternoon,  and  dine  with  me." 

"  Yours  to  command."    "  Be  there,  then,  sharp  at  four! 

Now  go,  work  hard,  and  make  vour  little  more  !" 

At  dinner  Mena  rattled  on,  expressed 

Whate'er  came  uppermost,  then  home  to  rest. 

The  hook  was  baited  craftily,  and  when 

The  fish  came  nibbling  ever  and  again, 

At  morn  a  client,  and,  when  asked  to  ame, 

Not  now  at  all  in  humour  to  decline, 

Philip  himself  one  holiday  drove  him  down, 

To  see  his  villa  some  few  miles  from  town. 

Mena  keeps  praising  up,  the  whole  way  there, 

The  Sabine  country,  and  the  Sabine  air ; 

So  Philip  sees  his  fish  is  fairly  caught, 

And  smiles  with  inward  triumph  at  the  thought. 

Besolved  at  any  price  to  have  his  whim, — 

For  that  is  best  of  all  repose  to  him, — 

Seven  hundred  pounds  he  gives  him  there  and  then, 

Proffers  on  easy  terms  as  much  again, 

And  so  persuades  him,  that,  with  tastes  like  his, 

He  ought  to  buy  a  firm  ; — so  bought  it  is. 


188  HORACE. 

Not  to  detain  3*011  longer  than  enough, 
The  dapper  cit  becomes  a  farmer  bluff, 
Talks  drains  and  subsoils,  ever  on  the  strain 
Grows  lean,  and  ages  with  the  lust  of  gain. 
But  when  his  sheep  arc  stolen,  when  murrains  smite 
His  goats,  and  his  best  crops  are  killed  with  blight, 
When  at  the  plough  his  oxen  drop  down  dead, 
Stung  with  his  losses,  up  one  night  from  bed 
He  springs,  and  on  a  cart-horse  makes  his  way, 
All  wrath,  to  Philip's  house,  by  break  of  day. 
"  How's  this  ?"  cries  Philip,  seeing  bim  unshorn 
And  shabby.     "  Why,  Vulteius,  you  look  worn. 
You  work,  methinks,  too  long  upon  the  stretch." 
"  Oh,  that's  not  it,  my  patron.     Call  me  wretch  ! 
That  is  the  only  fitting  name  for  me. 
Oh,  by  thy  Genius,  by  the  gods  that  be 
Thy  hearth's  protectors,  I  beseech,  implore, 
Give  me,  oh,  give  me  back  my  life  of  yore  !" 

If  for  the  worse  you  find  you've  changed  your  pla^e, 
Pause  not  to  think,  but  straight  your  steps  retrace. 
In  every  state  the  maxim  still  is  true, 
On  your  own  last  take  care  to  fit  your  shoe  1 


CHAPTER    X. 


DELICACY  OF  H  jRACE  S  HEALTH. — HIS  CHEERFULNESS. — LOVE 
OF  BOOKS.  —  HIS  PHILOSOPHY  PRACTICAL.  —  EPISTLE  TO 
AUGUSTUS.  —DEATH. 

Horace  had  probably  passed  forty  when  the  Epistle 
just  quoted  was  written.  Describing  himself  at  forty- 
four  (Epistles,  I.  20),  he  says  he  Avas  "  prematurely 
grey," — his  hair,  as  Ave  have  just  seen  (p.  185),  having 
been  originally  black, — adding  that  he  is 

"  In  person  small,  one  to  whom  warmth  is  life, 
In  temper  hasty,  yet  averse  from  strife." 

His  health  demanded  constant  care  ;  and  we  find  him 
writing  (Epistles,  I.  15)  to  a  friend,  to  ask  what  sort 
of  climate  and  people  are  to  be  found  at  Yelia  and 
Salernum, — the  one  a  town  of  Lucania,  the  other  of 
Campania, — as  he  has  been  ordered  by  his  doctor  to 
give  up  his  favourite  watering-place,  Baiae,  as  too  relax- 
ing. This  doctor  was  Antonius  Musa,  a  great  apostle 
of  the  cold-water  cure,  by  which  he  had  saved  the 
life  of  Augustus  when  in  extreme  danger.  The 
remedy  instantly  became  fashionable,  and  continued 


190  HORA  CE. 

so  until  the  Emperor's  nephew,  the  young  Marceflus, 
died  under  the  treatment.  Horace's  inquiries  are  just 
such  as  a  valetudinarian  fond  of  his  comforts  would 
be  likely  to  make  : — 

"Which  place  is  best  supplied  with  corn,  d'ye  think  ? 
Have  they  rain-water  or  fresh  springs  to  drink  ? 
Their  wines  I  care  not  for,  when  at  my  farm 
I  can  drink  any  sort  without  much  harm ; 
But  at  the  sea  I  need  .a  generous  kind 
To  warm  my  veins,  and  pass  into  my  mind, 
Enrich  me  with  new  hopes,  choice  words  supply, 
And  make  me  comely  in  a  lady's  eye. 
Which  tract  is  best  for  eame  ?  on  which  sea-coast 
Urchins  and  other  fish  abound  the  most  ? 
That  so,  when  I  return,  my  friends  may  see 
A  sleek  Phteacian  *  come  to  life  in  me  : 
These  things  you  needs  must  tell  me,  Vala  dear, 
And  I  no  less  must  act  on  what  I  hear."     (C.) 

Valetudinarian  though  he  was,  Horace  maintains, 
in  his  later  as  in  his  early  writings,  a  uniform  cheer- 
fulness. This  never  forsakes  him  ;  for  life  is  a  boon 
for  which  he  is  ever  grateful.  The  gods  have  allotted 
him  an  ample  share  of  the  means  of  enjoyment,  and  it 
is  his  own  fault  if  he  suffers  self-created  worries  or 
desires  to  vex  him.  By  the  questions  he  puts  to  a 
friend  in  one  of  the  latest  of  his  Epistles  (11.  2),  we 
see  what  was  the  discipline  he  applied  to  himself — 

"  You're  not  a  miser:  has  all  other  vice 
Departed  in  the  train  of  avarice  ? 
Or  do  ambitions  longings,  angry  fret, 
The  terror  of  the  grave,  torment  you  yet  ? 

*  The  Plueacians  were  proverbially  fond  of  good  Aving. 


HIS  SELF-DISCIPLINE.  191 

Can  you  make  sport  of  portents,  gipsy  crones, 
Hobgoblins,  dreams,  raw  head  and  bloody  bones  1 
Do  you  count  up  your  birthdays  year  by  year, 
And  thank  the  gods  with  gladness  and  blithe  cheer, 
O'erlook  the  failings  of  your  friends,  and  grow 
Gentler  and  better  as  your  sand  runs  low  ) "     (C.) 

And  to  this  beautiful  catalogue  of  what  should  be  a 
good  man's  aims,  let  us  add  the  picture  of  himself 
which  Horace  gives  us  in  another  and  earlier  Epistle 
(1.18):- 

"For  me,  when  freshened  by  my  spring's  pure  cold, 
Which  makes  my  villagers  look  pinched  and  old, 
What  prayers  are  mine  ?     '  0  may  I  yet  possess 
The  goods  I  have,  or,  if  heaven  pleases,  less  ! 
Let  the  few  years  that  Fate  may  grant  me  still 
Be  all  my  own,  not  held  at  others'  will ! 
Let  me  have  books,  and  stores  for  one  year  hence, 
Nor  make  my  life  one  flutter  of  suspense  !' 

But  I  forbear;  sufficient  'tis  to  pray 
To  Jove  for  what  he  gives  and  takes  away ; 
Grant  life,  grant  fortune,  for  myself  I'll  find 

•    That  best  of  blessings — a  contented  mind."     (C.) 

"  Let  me  have  books  ! "  These  play  a  great  part  in 
Horace's  life.  They  were  not  to  him,  what  Montaigne 
calls  them,  "  a  languid  pleasure,"  but  rather  as  they 
were  to  Wordsworth — 

"  A  substantial  world,  both  fresh  and  good, 
Round  which,  with  tendrils  strong  as  flesh  and  blood, 
Our  pastime  and  our  happiness  may  grow." 

Next  to  a  clear  friend,  they  were  Horace's  most  cher- 
ished companions.     Not  for  amusement  merely,  and 


192  HORACE. 

the  listless  luxury  of  the  self-wrapt  lounger,  were  they 
prized  by  him,  but  as  teachers  to  correct  his  faults,  to 
subdue  his  evil  propensities,  to  develop  his  higher 
nature,  to  purify  his  life  (Epistles,  I.  1),  and  to  help 
him  towards  attaining  "  that  best  of  blessings,  a  con- 
tented mind  : " — 

(c  Say,  is  your  bosom  fevered  with  the  fire 
Of  sordid  avarice  or  unchecked  desire  ? 
Know  there  are  spells  will  help  you  to  allay 
The  pain,  and  put  good  part  of  it  away. 
You're  bloated  by  ambition  ?  take  advice ; 
Yon  book  will  ease  you,  if  you  read  it  thrice. 
Run  through  the  list  of  faults  ;  whate'er  you  be, 
Coward,  pickthank,  spitfire,  drunkard,  debauchee, 
Submit  to  culture  patiently,  you'll  find 
Her  charms  can  humanise  the  rudest  mind."     (C.) 

Horace's  taste  was  as  catholic  in  philosophy  as  in 
literature.  He  was  of  no  school,  but  sought  in  the 
teachings  of  them  all  such  principles  as  would  make 
life  easier,  better,  and  happier:  "  Condo  at  compojio, 
quce  mox  depromere  possum  " — 

"I  search  and  search,  and  where  I  find  I  lay 
The  wisdom  up  against  a  rainy  day."     (C.) 

He  is  evermore  urging  his  friends  to  follow  his 
example; — to  resort  like  himself  to  these  " spells," — 
the  vcrha  et  voces,  by  which  he  brought  his  own  rest- 
less desires  and  disquieting  aspirations  into  subjection, 
and  fortified  himself  in  the  bliss  of  contentment.  He 
saw  they  were  letting  the  precious  hours  slip  from 
their  grasp, — hours  that  might  have   been  so  happy, 


HIS  HOLD  ON  OUR  HEARTS.  193 

but  were  so  weighted  with  disquiet  and  weariness  ; 
and  he  loved  his  friends  too  well  to  keep  silence  on 
this  theme.  We,  like  them,  it  has  been  admirably 
said,*  are  "  possessed  by  the  ambitions,  the  desires, 
the  weariness,  the  disquietudes,  which  pursued  the 
friends  of  Horace.  If  he  does  not  always  succeed 
with  us,  any  more  than  with  them,  in  curing  us  of 
these,  he  at  all  events  soothes  and  tranquillises  us  in 
the  moments  which  we  spend  with  him.  He  aug- 
ments, on  the  other  hand,  the  happiness  of  those  who 
are  already  happy ;  and  there  is  not  one  of  us  but 
feels  under  obligation  to  him  for  his  gentle  and  salu- 
tary lessons, — verbaqite  et  voces, — for  his  soothing  or 
invigorating  balsams,  as  much  as  though  this  gifted 
physician  of  soul  and  body  had  compounded  them 
specially  for  ourselves." 

When  he  published  the  First  Book  of  Epistles  he 
seems  to  have  thought  the  time  come  for  him  to  write 
no  more  lyrics  (Epistles,  I.  1) : — 

"  So  now  I  bid  my  idle  songs  adieu, 
And  turn  my  thoughts  to  what  is  j  ust  and  true."    (C. ) 

Graver  habits,  and  a  growing  fastidiousness  of  taste, 
were  likely  to  give  rise  to  this  feeling.  But  a  poet 
can  no  more  renounce  his  lyre  than  a  painter  his 
palette ;  and  his  fine  "  Secular  Hymn,"  and  many  of 
the  Odes  of  the  Fourth  Book,  which  were  written  after 
this  period,  prove  that,  so  far  from  suffering  any  decay 
in  poetical  power,  he  had  even  gained  in  force  of  con- 

*  Etude  Morale  et  Litteraire  sur  les  Epitres  d'Horace ;  par 
J.  A.  Estienne.      Paris,  1851.     P.  212. 

A.  C.   vol.  vi.  N 


194  HORACE. 

ception,  and  in  that  curlosa  felicitas,  that  exquisite 
felicity  of  expression,  which  has  been  justly  ascribed 
to  him  by  Petronius.  Several  years  afterwards,  when 
writing  of  the  mania  for  scribbling  verse  which  had 
beset  the  Romans,  as  if,  like  Dogberry's  reading  and 
writing,  the  faculty  of  writing  poetry  came  by  nature, 
he  alludes  to  his  own  sins  in  the  same  direction  with 
a  touch  of  his  old  irony  (Epistles,  II.  1) : — 

u  E'en  I,  who  vow  I  never  write  a  verse, 
Am  found  as  false  as  Parthia,  maybe  worse ; 
Before  the  dawn  I  rouse  myself  and  call 
For  pens  and  parchment,  writing-desk,  and  all. 
None  dares  be  pilot  who  ne'er  steered  a  craft ; 
No  untrained  nurse  administers  a  draught ; 
None  but  skilled  workmen  handle  workmen's  tools; 
But  verses  all  men  scribble,  wise  or  fools."     (C.) 

Or,  as  Pope  with  a  liner  emphasis  translates  his 
words — ■ 

"But  those  who  cannot  write,  and  those  who  can, 
All  rhyme,  and  scrawl,  and  scribble  to  a  man." 

It  was  very  well  for  Horace  to  laugh  at  his  own 
inability  to  abstain  from  verse-making,  but,  had  he 
been  ever  so  much  inclined  to  silence,  his  friends 
would  not  have  let  him  rest.  Some  wanted  an  Ode, 
some  an  Epode,  some  a  Satire  (Epistles,  II.  2) — 

**  Three  hungry  guests  for  different  dishes  call, 
And  how's  one  host  to.  satisfy  them  all  ? "     (C.) 

And  there  was  one  friend,  whose  request  it  was  not  easy 
to  deny.     This  was  Augustus.     Ten  years  after  vhe 


EPISTLE  TO  AUGUSTUS.  197 

It  is  not  while  they  live,  he  continues,  that,  in  the 
ordinary  case,  the  worth  of  the  great  benefactors  of 
mankind  is  recognised.  Only  after  they  are  dead,  do 
misunderstanding  and  malice  give  way  to  admiration 
and  love.  Rome,  it  is  true,  has  been  more  just.  It 
has  appreciated,  and  it  avows,  how  much  it  owes  to 
Augustus.  But  the  very  same  people  who  have 
shown  themselves  wise  and  just  in  this  are  unable  to 
extend  the  same  principle  to  living  literary  genius. 
A  poet  must  have  been  long  dead  and  buried,  or 
he  is  nought.  The  very  flaws  of  old  writers  are 
cried  up  as  beauties  by  pedantic  critics,  while  the 
highest  excellence  in  a  writer  of  the  day  meets  with 
no  response. 

"  Had  Greece  but  been  as  carping  and  as  cold 
To  new  productions,  what  would  now  be  old  ? 
"What  standard  works  would  there  have  been,  to  come 
Beneath  the  public  eye,  the  public  thumb  ? "     (C.) 

Let  us  then  look  the  facts  fairly  in  the  face ;  let  us 

"  clear  our  minds  of  cant."    If  a  poem  be  bad  in  itself, 

let  us  say  so,  no  matter  how  old  or  how  famous  it  be ; 

if  it  be  good,  let  us  be  no  less  candid,  though  the  poet 

be  still  struggling  into  notice  among  us. 

Thanks,  he  proceeds,  to  our  happy  times,  men  are 

now  devoting  themselves  to  the  arts  of  peace.    "  Grcpxia 

capta  ferum  victorem  cepit " — "  Her  ruthless  conqueror 

Greece  has  overcome."      The  Romans  of  the   better 

class,  who  of  old  thought  only  of  the  triumphs  of  the 

forum,  or  of  turning  over  their  money  profitably,  are 

now  bitten  bv  a  literary  furor. 

N* 


198  no  RACE. 

"  Pert  boys,  prim  fathers,  dine  in  wreaths  of  bay, 
And  'twixt  the  courses  warble  out  the  lay."     (C.) 

But  this  craze  is  no  unmixed  evil ;  for,  take  him  all  in 
all,  your  poet  can  scarcely  be  a  bad  fellow.  Pulse 
and  second  bread  are  a  banquet  for  him.  He  is  sure 
not  to  be  greedy  or  close-fisted  ;  for  to  him,  as  Tenny- 
son in  the  same  spirit  says,  "  Mellow  metres  are  more 
than  ten  per  cent."  Neither  is  he  likely  to  cheat  his 
partner  or  his  ward.  He  may  cut  a  poor  figure  in  a 
campaign,  but  he  does  the  state  good  service  at  home. 

"  His  lessons  form  the  child's  young  lips,  and  wean 
The  boyish  ear  from  words  and  tales  unclean  ; 
As  years  roll  on,  he  moulds  the  ripening  mind, 
And  makes  it  just  and  generous,  sweet  and  kind  ; 
He  tells  of  worthy  precedents,  displays 
The  examples  of  the  past  to  after  days, 
Consoles  affliction,  and  disease  allays."     (C.) 

Horace  then  goes  on  to  sketch  the  rise  of  poetry  and 
the  drama  among  the  Romans,  glancing,  as  he  goes, 
at  the  perverted  taste  which  was  making  the  stage  the 
vehicle  of  mere  spectacle,  and  intimating  his  own  high 
estimate  of  the  dramatic  writer  in  words  which  Shake- 
speare seems  to  have  been  meant  to  realise  : — 

"  That  man  I  hold  true  master  of  his  art, 
Who  with  fictitious  woes  can  wring  my  heart ; 
Can  rouse  me,  soothe  me,  pierce  me  with  the  thrill 
Of  vain  alarm,  and,  as  by  magic  skill, 
Bear  me  to  Thebes,  to  Athens,  where  you  will."     (C.) 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  Horace  treats  dramatic  writing  as 
the  very  highest  exercise  of  poetic  genius ;   and,  in 


EPISTLE   TO  AUGUSTUS.  199 

dwelling  on  it  as  he  does,  he  probably  felt  sure  of 
carrying  with  him  the  fullest  sympathies  of  Augustus. 
For  among  his  varied  literary  essays,  the  Emperor,  like 
most  dilettanti,  had  tried  his  hand  upon  a  tragedy. 
Failing,  however,  to  satisfy  himself,  he?  had  the  rarer 
wisdom  to  suppress  it.  The  story  of  his  play  was 
that  of  Ajax,  and  when  asked  one  day  how  it  was 
getting  on,  he  replied  that  his  hero  "  had  finished  Tiis 
career  upon  a  sponge  ! " — "  Ajacem  suum  in  spongio 
incubuisse." 

From  the  drama  Horace  proceeds  to  speak  of  the 
more  timid  race  of  bards,  who,  "  instead  of  being  hissed 
and  acted,  would  be  read,"  and  who,  himself  included, 
are  apt  to  do  themselves  harm  in  various  ways  through 
over-sensitiveness  or  simplicity.  Thus,  for  example, 
they  will  intrude  their  works  on  Augustus,  when  he 
is  busy  or  tired ;  or  wince,  poor  sensitive  rogues,  if  a 
friend  ventures  to  take  exception  to  a  verse ;  or  bore 
him  by  repeating,  unasked,  one  or  other  of  their  pet 
passages,  or  by  complaints  that  their  happiest  thoughts 
and  most  highly-polished  turns  escape  unnoticed ;  or, 
worse  folly  than  all,  they  will  expect  to  be  sent  for  by 
Augustus  the  moment  he  comes  across  their  poems, 
and  told  "  to  starve  no  longer,  and  go  writing  on."  Yet, 
continues  Horace,  it  is  better  the  whole  tribe  should 
be  disappointed,  than  that  a  great  man's  glory  should 
be  dimmed,  like  Alexander's,  by  being  sung  of  by  a 
second-rate  poet.  And  wherefore  should  it  be  so,  when 
Augustus  has  at  command  the  genius  of  such  men  as 
Virgil  and  Yarius  1  They,  and  they  only,  are  the  fit 
laureates  of  the  Emperor's  great  achievements  ;  and  in 


200  HORACE. 

this  way  the  poet  returns,  like  a  skilful  composer,  to 
the  motif  with  which  he  set  out — distrust  of  his  own 
powers,  which  has  restrained,  and  must  continue  to 
restrain,  him  from  pressing  himself  and  his  small 
poetic  powers  -upon  the  Emperor's  notice. 

In  the  other  poems  which  belong  to  this  period — 
the  Second  Epistle  of  the  Second  Book,  and  the  Epistle 
to  the  Pisos,  generally  known  as  the  Ars  Poet  lea — 
Horace  confines  himself  almost  exclusively  to  purely 
literary  topics.  The  dignity  of  literature  was  never 
better  vindicated  than  in  these  Epistles.  In  Horace's 
estimation  it  was  a  thing  always  to  be  approached  with 
reverence.  Mediocrity  in  it  was  intolerable.  Genius 
is  much,  but  genius  without  art  will  not  win  immor- 
tality ;  "  for  a  good  poet's  made,  as  well  as  born." 
There  must  be  a  working  up  to  the  highest  models, 
a  resolute  intolerance  of  anything  slight  or  slovenly, 
a  fixed  purpose  to  put  what  the  writer  has  to  express 
into  forms  at  once  the  most  beautiful,  suggestive,  and 
compact.  The  mere  trick  of  literary  composition 
Horace  holds  exceedingly  cheap.  Brilliant  nonsense 
finds  no  allowance  from  him.  Truth — truth  in  feel- 
ing and  in  thought — must  be  present,  if  the  work  is 
to  have  any  value.  "Scribendi  recte  sapere  est  et  prin- 
cijnum  et  forte  ^ — 

"  Of  writing  well,  be  sure  fhe  secret  lies 
In  wisdom,  therefore  study  to  be  wise."     (C 

Whatever  the  form  of  composition,  heroic,  didactic, 
lyric,  or  dramatic,  it  must  be  pervaded  by  unity  of 
feeling  and  design;  and  no  style  is  good,  or  illustration 


TUB   SECULAR  HYMN.  195 

imperial  power  had  been  placed  in  his  hands  (b.c.  17), 
he  resolved  to  celebrate  a  great  national  festival  in 
honour  of  his  own  successful  career.  Horace  was 
called  on  to  write  an  Ode,  known  in  his  works  as 
"The  Secular  Hymn,"  to  be  sung  upon  the  occa- 
sion by  twenty-seven  boys  and  twenty-seven  girls  of 
noble  birth.  "  The  Ode,"  says  Macleane,  "  was  sung 
at  the  most  solemn  part  of  the  festival,  while  the 
Emperor  was  in  person  offering  sacrifice  at  the  second 
hour  of  the  night,  on  the  river  side,  upon  three  altars, 
attended  by  the  fifteen  men  who  presided  over  religi- 
ous affairs.  The  effect  must  have  been  very  beautiful, 
and  no  wonder  if  the  impression  on  Horace's  feelings 
was  strong  and  lasting."  He  was  obviously  pleased 
at  being  chosen  for  the  task,  and  not  without  pride, — a 
very  just  one, — at  the  way  it  was  performed.  In  the 
Ode  (TV.  6),  which  seems  to  have  been  a  kind  of  prelude 
to  the  "  Secular  Hymn,"  he  anticipates  that  the  virgins 
Avho  chanted  it  will  on  their  marriage-day  be  proud 
to  recall  the  fact  that  they  had  taken  part  in  this  ora 
torio  under  his  baton  : — 

"  When  the  cvclical  year  brought  its  festival  daA*s, 

My  voice  led  the  hymn  of  thanksgiving  and  praise, 

So  sweet,  the  immortals  to  hear  it  were  fain, 

And  'twas  Horace  the  Poet  who  taught  me  the  strain  !  " 

It  was  probably  at  the  suggestion  of  Augustus,  also, 
that  he  wrote  the  magnificent  Fourth  and  Four- 
teenth Odes  of  the  Fourth  Book.  These  were  written, 
however,  to  celebrate  great  national  victories,  and  were 
pitched  in  the  high  key  appropriate  to  the  theme. 
But  this  was  not  enough  for  Augustus.     He  wanted 


196  HORACE. 

something  more  homely  and  human,  and  was  envious 
of  the  friends  to  whom  Horace  had  addressed  the 
charming  Epistles  of  the  First  Book,  a  copy  of  which 
the  poet  had  sent  to  him  by  the  hands  of  a  friend 
(Epistles,  I.  13),  but  only  to  be  given  to  the  Caesar, 

"  If  he  be  well,  and  in  a  happy  mood, 
And  ask  to  have  them,— be  it  understood." 

And  so  he  wrote  to  Horace — the  letter  is  quoted  by 
Suetonius — "Look  you,  I  take  it  much  amiss  that 
none  of  your  writings  of  this  class  are  addressed  to  me. 
Are  you  afraid  it  will  damage  your  reputation  with 
posterity  to  be  thought  to  have  been  one  of  my  inti- 
mates ? "  Such  a  letter,  had  Horace  been  a  vain  man 
or  an  indiscreet,  might  have  misled  him  into  approach- 
ing Augustus  with  the  freedom  he  courted.  But  he 
fell  into  no  such  error.  There  is  perfect  frankness 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  Epistle,  with  which  he 
met  the  Emperor's  request  (II.  1),  but  the  social  dis- 
tance between  them  is  maintained  with  an  emphasis 
which  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel.  The  Epistle  opens 
by  skilfully  insinuating  that,  if  the  poet  has  not  before 
addressed  the  Emperor,  it  is  that  he  may  not  be  sus- 
pected of  encroaching  on  the  hours  which  were  due  to 
the  higher  cares  of  state  : — 

"  Since  you,  great  Caesar,  singly  wield  the  charge 
Of  Rome's  concerns,  so  manifold  and  lar^e, — 
With  sword  and  shield  the  commonwealth  protect, 
With  morals  grace  it,  and  with  laws  correct, — 
The  bard,  methinks,  would  do  a  public  wrong, 
Who,  having  gained  your  ear,  should  keep  it  long."   (C.) 


EPISTLE  TO   THE  PISOS.  201 

endurable,  which  either  overlays  or  does  not  harmonise 
with  the  subject  in  hand. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Pisos  does  not  profess  to  be 
a  complete  exposition  of  the  poet's  art.  It  glances 
only  at  small  sections  of  that  wide  theme.  So  far  as 
it  goes,  it  is  all  gold,  full  of  most  instructive  hints 
for  a  sound  critical  taste  and  a  pure  literary  style. 
It  was  probably  meant  to  cure  the  younger  Piso  of 
that  passion  for  writing  verse  which  had,  as  we  have 
seen,  spread  like  a  plague  among  the  Eomans,  and 
which  made  a  visit  to  the  public  baths  a  penance  to 
critical  ears, — for  there  the  poetasters  were  always 
sure  of  an  audience, — and  added  new  terrors  to  the 
already  sufficiently  formidable  horrors  of  the  Roman 
banquet.*  When  we  find  an  experienced  critic  like 
Horace  urging  young  Piso,  as  he  does,  to  keep  what  he 
writes  by  him  for  nine  years,  the  conclusion  is  irresist- 
ible, that  he  hoped  by  that  time  the  writer  would  see 
the  wisdom  of  suppressing  his  crude  lucubrations  alto- 
gether. No  one  knew  better  than  Horace  that  first- 
class  work  never  wants  such  protracted  mellowing. 

Soon  aftei  this  poem  was  written  the  great  palace 
on  the  Esquiline  lost  its  master.  He  died  (b.c.  8)  in 
the  middle  of  the  year,  bequeathing  his  poet-friend  to 
the  care  of  Augustus  in  the  words  "  Hordti  Flacci,  id 
mei,  esto  memor" — "  Bear  Horace  in  your  memory  as 
you  would  myself."    But  the  legacy  was  not  long  upon 

*  This  theory  has  been  worked  out  with  great  ability  by  the 
late  M.  A.  Baron,  in  his  'Epitre  d'Horace  aux  Pisor.s  sur  l'Art 
Poetique' — Bruxelles,  1857;  which  is  accompanied  bj  a  masterly 
translation  and  notes  of  great  value. 


202  HORACE. 

the  emperor's  hands.     Seventeen  years  before,  Horace 
had  written  : 

"  Think  not  that  I  have  sworn  a  bootless  oath ; 
Yes,  we  shall  go,  shall  go, 
Hand  linked  in  hand,  where'er  thou  leadest,  both 
The  last  sad  road  below." 

The  lines  must  have  rung  in  the  poet's  ears  like  a  sad 
refrain.  The  Digentia  lost  its  charm  ;  he  could  not 
see  its  costal  waters  for  the  shadows  of  Charon's 
rueful  stream.  The  prattle  of  his  loved  Bandusian 
spring  could  not  wean  his  thoughts  from  the  vision  of 
his  other  self  wandering  unaccompanied  along  that 
"last  sad  road."  We  may  fancy  that  Horace  was 
thenceforth  little  seen  in  his  accustomed  haunts.  He 
who  had  so  often  soothed  the  sorrows  of  other  bereaved 
hearts,  answered  with  a  wistful  smile  to  the  friendly 
consolations  of  the  many  that  loved  him.  His  work 
was  done.  It  was  time  to  go  away.  Not  all  the 
skill  of  Orpheus  could  recall  him  whom  he  had  lost. 
The  welcome  end  came  sharply  and  suddenly  ;  and 
one  day,  when  the  bleak  November  wind  was  whirl- 
ing down  the  oak-leaves  on  his  welldoved  brook,  the 
servants  of  his  Sabine  farm  heard  that  they  should  no 
more  see  the  good,  cheery  master,  whose  pleasant 
smile  and  kindly  word  had  so  often  made  their  labours 
light.  There  was  many  a  sad  heart,  too,  we  may  be 
sure,  in  Eome,  when  the  wit  who  never  wounded,  the 
poet  who  ever  charmed,  the  friend  who  never  failed, 
was  laid  in  a  corner  of  the  Esquiline,  close  to  the 
tomb  of  his  "  dear  knight  Mascenas."      He  died  on  the 


HIS   DEATH. 


203 


27th  November  B.C.  8,  the  kindly,  lonely  man, 
leaving  to  Augustus  what  little  he  possessed.  One 
would  fain  trust  his  own  words  were  inscribed  upon 
his  tomb,  as  in  the  supreme  hour  the  faith  they 
expressed  was  of  a  surety  strong  within  his  heart, — 

NON    OMNIS   MORIAR. 


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